English

De Sitter Momentum Space

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-04-20 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We construct a natural and nonperturbative momentum space for quantum field theory on (d+1)(d+1)-dimensional de Sitter (dS) spacetime in the Poincar\'e slicing, adapted to early Universe cosmology. In particular, we identify the dS frequency as the unitary-representation label of the dS isometry group SO(1,d+1)\mathrm{SO}(1, d+1). By diagonalizing the quadratic Casimir together with spatial translations, we provide a harmonic expansion of operators in what we call the Kontorovitch-Lebedev-Fourier (KLF) space. This momentum space shares many structural properties with its Minkowski counterpart, for instance: equations of motion reduce to algebraic equations, and the quadratic dynamics provides a simple propagator analogous to flat space. We reformulate the perturbative computation of in-in correlators in KLF momentum space, showing from first principles how time integrals turn into frequency-space integrals over meromorphic functions. We show how our construction streamlines computations, naturally accommodates the contributions from principal and complementary series in the K\"all\'en-Lehmann spectral decomposition of composite operators, and leads to a group-theoretical method to evaluate loop momentum integrals.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.15228,
  title  = {De Sitter Momentum Space},
  author = {Nathan Belrhali and Arthur Poisson and Sébastien Renaux-Petel and Denis Werth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.15228},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

7 pages, v2: minor changes and reference to the companion paper added

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:14:33.524Z