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DOE OSTI · 3006303

Hidden zeros of the cosmological wavefunction

De, Shounak [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000220133201)·Paranjape, Shruti [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:000000032613718X)·Pokraka, Andrzej [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0000000311864624)·Spradlin, Marcus [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0009000560842466)·Volovich, Anastasia [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0009000825063207)
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Abstract

Motivated by the recent discovery of hidden zeros in particle and string amplitudes, we characterize zeros of individual graph contributions to the cosmological wavefunction of a scalar field theory. We demonstrate that these contributions factorize near these zeros for all tree graphs and provide evidence that this extends to loop graphs as well. We explicitly construct polytopal realizations of the relevant graph associahedra and show that the cosmological zeros have natural geometric and physical interpretations. As a byproduct, we establish an equivalence between the wavefunction coefficients of chain graphs and flat-space Tr(ϕ 3 ) amplitudes, enabling us to leverage the cosmological zeros to uncover the recently discovered hidden zeros of colored amplitudes.

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Cosmological modelsDifferential and Algebraic GeometryDifferential and algebraic geometryHigh energy physicsScattering AmplitudesScattering amplitudes

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BibTeXRIS

De, Shounak [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000220133201), Paranjape, Shruti [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:000000032613718X), Pokraka, Andrzej [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0000000311864624), Spradlin, Marcus [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0009000560842466), Volovich, Anastasia [Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)] (ORCID:0009000825063207). 2025-07-16. Hidden zeros of the cosmological wavefunction. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep07(2025)174

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