English

On Causality Conditions in de Sitter Spacetime

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-05-17 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We carefully consider the Shapiro time delay due to black holes and shockwaves in de Sitter spacetime and study the implications for causality. We discuss how causality conditions of AdS and flat spacetime can be applied in de Sitter spacetime, using spatial shifts measured on the boundary to define ``fastest null geodesics" and taking into account the ``stretching" of the de Sitter Penrose diagram. We consider the propagation of a massless spin-1 field with an RFFRFF coupling in a de Sitter shockwave background as an illustrative example. We also briefly discuss connections to the ANEC.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.02559,
  title  = {On Causality Conditions in de Sitter Spacetime},
  author = {Noah Bittermann and Daniel McLoughlin and Rachel A. Rosen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.02559},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:22:53.118Z