English

Constructing Infrared Finite Propagators in Inflating Space-time

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-11-20 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The usual (Bunch-Davies) Feynman propagator of a massless field is not well defined in an expanding universe due to the presence of infrared divergences. We propose a new propagator which yields infrared finite answers to any correlation function. The key point is that in a de Sitter spacetime there is an ambiguity in the zero-mode of the propagator. This ambiguity can be used to cancel the apparent divergences which arise in some loop calculations in eternally (or semi-eternally) inflating spacetime. We refer to this process as zero-mode modification. The residual ambiguity is fixed by observational measurement. We also discuss the application of this method to calculations involving the graviton propagator.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1002.4214,
  title  = {Constructing Infrared Finite Propagators in Inflating Space-time},
  author = {Jason Kumar and Louis Leblond and Arvind Rajaraman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.4214},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:49:58.093Z