Renormalization of the inflationary perturbations revisited

Abstract: In this work we clarify aspects of renormalization on curved backgrounds focussing on the potential ramifications on the amplitude of inflationary perturbations. We provide an alternate view of the often used adiabatic prescription by deriving a correspondence between the adiabatic subtraction terms and traditional renormalization. Specifically, we show how adiabatic subtraction can be expressed as a set of counter terms that are introduced by redefining the bare parameters of the action. Our representation of adiabatic subtraction then allows us to easily find other renormalization prescriptions differing only in the finite parts of the counter terms. As our main result, we present for quadratic inflation how one may consistently express the renormalization of the spectrum of perturbations from inflation as a redefinition of the bare cosmological constant and Planck mass such that the observable predictions coincide with the unrenormalized result.