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Abstract:
The graviton propagator in four-dimensional de Sitter space is found in closed form. The vacuum state is taken to be the de Sitter-invariant “euclidean” or “Gibbons-Hawking” vacuum. The gauge-fixing term used is the standard choice introduced by Christensen and Duff. The propagator is given explicity in this gauge, and is found to be finite for points that are not null-related. The method used is new: mode-sums on the four-sphere are expressed as maximally symmetric bitensors. The result is then given in a completely geometric and coördinate-free form. This same method can easily be used for maximally symmetric spaces of general dimension, including anti-de Sitter space with supersymmetric boundary conditions, and for different choices of gauge.
