Theory HEP Seminar

Cosmology meets cohomology: differential equations for FRW correlators

Andrzej Pokraka

Brown University

The cosmological polytope program has revealed interesting connections between positive geometries studied in the amplitudes community and the so called wavefunction of the universe in toy models of FRW cosmologies. To compute these FRW correlators one often faces integrals that are too difficult to compute by direct integration. We propose that the method of (canonical) differential equations provides an efficient alternative for evaluating these integrals. Moreover, we further develop our geometric understanding of these integrals by describing the associated (relative) twisted cohomology. Leveraging recent progress in the understanding of twisted cohomology in the Feynman integral community, we give an algorithm to predict the basis size and simplify the computation of the differential equations satisfied by FRW correlators.