Renormalization group flow and symmetry restoration in de Sitter space

Abstract: We compute the renormalization group flow of O(N) scalar field theories in de Sitter space using nonperturbative renormalization group techniques in the local potential approximation. We obtain the flow of the effective potential on superhorizon scales for arbitrary space-time dimension D=d+1. We show that, due to strong infrared fluctuations, the latter is qualitatively similar to the corresponding one in Euclidean space with D=0. It follows that spontaneously broken symmetries are radiatively restored in any space-time dimension and for any value of N.