The Fermion Self-Energy during Inflation
Abstract
We compute the one loop fermion self-energy for massless Dirac + Einstein in the presence of a locally de Sitter background. We employ dimensional regularization and obtain a fully renormalized result by absorbing all divergences with BPHZ counterterms. An interesting technical aspect of this computation is the need for a noninvariant counterterm owing to the breaking of de Sitter invariance by our gauge condition. Our result can be used in the quantum-corrected Dirac equation to search for inflation-enhanced quantum effects from gravitons, analogous to those which have been found for massless, minimally coupled scalars.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0511140,
title = {The Fermion Self-Energy during Inflation},
author = {Shun-Pei Miao and R. P. Woodard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0511140},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
63 pages, 3 figures (uses axodraw.sty), LaTeX 2epsilon. Revised version (to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity) corrects some typoes and contains some new references