de Sitter invariance of the dS graviton vacuum

Abstract

The two-point function of linearized gravitons on de Sitter space is infrared divergent in the standard transverse traceless synchronous gauge defined by $k=0$ cosmological coordinates (also called conformal or Poincare coordinates). We show that this divergence can be removed by adding a linearized diffeomorphism to each mode function; i.e., by an explicit change of gauge. It follows that the graviton vacuum state is well-defined and de Sitter invariant in agreement with various earlier arguments.

14 pages, 1 figure