English

Scale and Conformal Invariance on (A)dS

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-08-15 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We examine the question of scale versus conformal invariance on maximally symmetric curved backgrounds and study general 2-derivative conformally invariant free theories of vectors and tensors. For spacetime dimension D>4D>4, these conformal theories can be diagonalized into standard massive fields in which unbroken conformal symmetry non-trivially mixes components of different spins. In D=4D=4, the tensor case becomes a conformal theory mixing a partially massless spin-2 field with a massless spin-1 field. For massless linearized gravity in D=4D = 4, we confirm through direct calculation that correlation functions of gauge-invariant operators take the conformally invariant form, despite the absence of standard conformal symmetry at the level of the action.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2402.12430,
  title  = {Scale and Conformal Invariance on (A)dS},
  author = {Kara Farnsworth and Kurt Hinterbichler and Ondrej Hulik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.12430},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

42 pages. v2 minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:53:36.836Z