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The fermion self-energy during inflation

S P Miao and R P Woodard

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We compute the one-loop fermion self-energy for massless Dirac + Einstein in the presence of a locally de Sitter background. We employ dimensional regularization and obtain a fully renormalized result by absorbing all divergences with BPHZ counterterms. An interesting technical aspect of this computation is the need for a noninvariant counterterm owing to the breaking of de Sitter invariance by our gauge condition. Our result can be used in the quantum-corrected Dirac equation to search for inflation-enhanced quantum effects from gravitons, analogous to those which have been found for massless, minimally coupled scalars.


PACS

04.60.Pp Loop quantum gravity, quantum geometry, spin foams

04.20.Fy Canonical formalism, Lagrangians, and variational principles

98.80.Jk Mathematical and relativistic aspects of cosmology

98.80.Cq Particle-theory and field-theory models of the early Universe (including cosmic pancakes, cosmic strings, chaotic phenomena, inflationary universe, etc.)

MSC

83F05 Cosmology

83C05 Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems)

83C47 Methods of quantum field theory (See also 81T20)

Subjects

Gravitation and cosmology

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 5 (7 March 2006)

Received 29 November 2005, in final form 16 January 2006

Published 20 February 2006



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