de Sitter Vacua, Renormalization and Locality

Abstract

We analyze the renormalization properties of quantum field theories in de Sitter space and show that only two of the maximally invariant vacuum states of free fields lead to consistent perturbation expansions. One is the Euclidean vacuum, and the other can be viewed as an analytic continuation of Euclidean functional integrals on $R{P}^d$. The corresponding Lorentzian manifold is the future half of global de Sitter space with boundary conditions on fields at the origin of time. We argue that the perturbation series in this case has divergences at the origin, which render the future evolution of the system indeterminate without a better understanding of high energy physics.

JHEP Latex, 13 pages, v2. references added

References in corpus (3)

• Initial Conditions for Inflation
• Interacting Quantum Field Theory in de Sitter Vacua
• Elliptic de Sitter Space: dS/Z_2

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