Loops in inflationary correlation functions

We review the recent progress regarding the loop corrections to the correlation functions in the inflationary universe. A naive perturbation theory predicts that the loop corrections generated during inflation suffer from various infrared (IR) pathologies. Introducing an IR cutoff by hand is neither satisfactory nor enough to fix the problem of a secular growth, which may ruin the predictive power of inflation models if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We discuss the origin of the IR divergences and explore the regularity conditions of the loop corrections for the adiabatic perturbation, the iso-curvature perturbation, and the tensor perturbation, in turn. These three kinds of perturbations have qualitative differences, but in discussing the IR regularity there is a feature common to all cases, which is the importance of the proper identification of observable quantities. Genuinely, observable quantities should respect the gauge invariance from the view point of a local observer. Interestingly, we find that the requirement of the IR regularity restricts the allowed quantum states. (topical review)