  We discuss the treatment of squeezed states as excitations in the Euclidean
vacuum of de Sitter space. A comparison with the treatment of these states as
candidate no-particle states, or alpha-vacua, shows important differences
already in the free theory. At the interacting level alpha-vacua are
inconsistent, but squeezed state excitations seem perfectly acceptable. Indeed,
matrix elements can be renormalized in the excited states using precisely the
standard local counterterms of the Euclidean vacuum. Implications for
inflationary scenarios in cosmology are discussed.
