Fermion Mass Generation in de Sitter Space
arXiv:gr-qc/0602011 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.73.064036
Abstract
We study the one-loop radiative corrections for massless fermions in de Sitter space induced by a Yukawa coupling to a light, nearly minimally coupled scalar field. We show that the fermions acquire a mass. Next we construct the corresponding (nonlocal) effective fermionic action, which -- in contrast to the case of a massive Dirac fermion -- preserves chirality. Nevertheless, the resulting fermion dynamics is precisely that of a Dirac fermion with a mass proportional to the expansion rate. Our finding supports the view that an observer or a test particle responds to a scalar field in inflation by shifting its energy rather than seeing a thermal bath.
17 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX
Cited by in corpus (15)
- Leading Log Solution for Inflationary Yukawa
- Gravitons Enhance Fermions during Inflation
- Two loop stress-energy tensor for inflationary scalar electrodynamics
- Two Loop Scalar Bilinears for Inflationary SQED
- Quantum Gravity Corrections to the One Loop Scalar Self-Mass during Inflation
- Quantum radiative corrections to slow-roll inflation
- Scalar Field Equations from Quantum Gravity during Inflation
- A Simple Operator Check of the Effective Fermion Mode Function during Inflation
- One Loop Corrected Mode Functions for SQED during Inflation
- A Simplified Quantum Gravitational Model of Inflation
- Cosmology is not a Renormalization Group Flow
- Ultraviolet Regularisation in de Sitter Space
- Generalizing Starobinskii's Formalism to Yukawa Theory & to Scalar QED
- The Scalar Field Kernel in Cosmological Spaces
- Baryogenesis from the amplification of vacuum fluctuations during inflation