De Sitter Breaking in Field Theory
Abstract
I argue against the widespread notion that manifest de Sitter invariance on the full de Sitter manifold is either useful or even attainable in gauge theories. Green's functions and propagators computed in a de Sitter invariant gauge are generally more complicated than in some noninvariant gauges. What is worse, solving the gauge-fixed field equations in a de Sitter invariant gauge generally leads to violations of the original, gauge invariant field equations. The most interesting free quantum field theories possess no normalizable, de Sitter invariant states. This precludes the existence of de Sitter invariant propagators. Even had such propagators existed, infrared divergent processes would still break de Sitter invariance.
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0408002,
title = {De Sitter Breaking in Field Theory},
author = {R. P. Woodard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0408002},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
16 pages, LaTeX 2e, no figures, to appear in the proceedings of "Deserfest: A celebration of the life and works of Stanley Deser", University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, April 3-5, 2004