The Functional Measure for the In-In Path Integral

Abstract: The in-in path integral of a scalar field propagating in a fixed background is formulated in a suitable function space. The free kinetic operator, whose inverse gives the propagators of the in-in perturbation theory, becomes essentially self adjoint after imposing appropriate boundary conditions. An explicit spectral representation is given for the scalar in the flat space and the standard propagators are rederived using this representation. In this way the subtle boundary path integral over the field configurations at the return time is handled straightforwardly. It turns out that not only the values of the forward (+) and the backward (-) evolving fields but also their time derivatives must be matched at the return time, which is mainly overlooked in the literature. This formulation also determines the field configurations that are included in the path integral uniquely. We show that some of the recently suggested instanton-like solutions corresponding to the stationary phases of the cosmological in-in path integrals can be rigorously identified as limits of sequences in the function space.