We express the in-in functional determinant giving the one-loop effective potential for a scalar field propagating in a cosmological spacetime in terms of the mode functions specifying the vacuum of the theory and then apply adiabatic regularization to make this bare potential finite. In this setup, the adiabatic regularization offers a particular renormalization prescription that isolates the effects of the cosmic expansion. We apply our findings to determine the radiative corrections to the classical inflaton potentials in scalar field inflationary models and also we derive an effective potential for the superhorizon curvature perturbation $\zeta$ encoding its scatterings with the subhorizon modes. Although the resulting modifications to the cosmological observables like non-Gaussianity turn out to be small, they distinctively appear after horizon crossing.

• Received 5 September 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.123505