English

Complex geodesics in de Sitter space

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-03-22 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The two-point function of a free massive scalar field on a fixed background can be evaluated in the large mass limit by using a semiclassical geodesic approximation. In de Sitter space, however, this poses a puzzle. Certain spacelike separated points are not connected by real geodesics despite the corresponding two-point function in the Bunch-Davies state being non-vanishing. We resolve this puzzle by considering complex geodesics after analytically continuing to the sphere. We compute one-loop corrections to the correlator and discuss the implications of our results to de Sitter holography.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.01398,
  title  = {Complex geodesics in de Sitter space},
  author = {Shira Chapman and Damián A. Galante and Eleanor Harris and Sameer U. Sheorey and David Vegh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.01398},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

20+13 pages, 5 figures. v2: updated refs to match published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:20:50.826Z