de Sitter QED

✍ Scribed by B Binegar; C Fronsdal; W Heidenreich

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 985 KB
• Volume: 149
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-4916(83)90197-5

✦ Synopsis

Attention

is called to the fact that the well-known and straightforward generalization of electrodynamics to de Sitter space is incompatible with conformal invariance.

In addition, there is difficulty in reconciling the space of one-photon states in de Sitter QED, for which the field carries no degree of freedom related to helicity, with that of flat space QED in which both signs of the helicity appear. The requirement of conformal invariance leads to the introduction of two vector potentials in de Sitter electrodynamics and resolves the helicity problem.

A conformally invariant. indefinite metric quantization is carried out, and the nature of the flat space limit is clarified.

Implications for a theory of composite massless particles are discussed, as well as applications to supersymmetry and supergravity.