Mode analysis and Ward identities for perturbative quantum gravity in de Sitter space

Abstract

We study linearized gravitons on the D-dimensional open submanifold spanned by de Sitter conformal coordinates. The physical modes are found in the same way as for flat space by imposing exact gauge conditions on the invariant field equations and then exploiting the residual gauge freedom of solutions. The resulting polatization tensors have vanishing zero components and are transverse and traceless, just as in flat space. We also show that vacua exist such that the ghost and graviton propagators obey the Ward identity relating them.