Higher spin de Sitter quasinormal modes

We construct higher spin quasinormal modes algebraically in D-dimensional de Sitter spacetime using the ambient space formalism. The quasinormal modes fall into two nonunitary lowest-weight representations of so(1, D). From a local QFT point of view, the lowest-weight quasinormal modes of massless higher spin fields are produced by gauge-invariant boundary conserved currents and boundary higher-spin Weyl tensors inserted at the southern pole of the past boundary. We also show that the quasinormal spectrum of a massless/massive spin-s field is precisely encoded in the Harish-Chandra character corresponding to the unitary massless/massive spin-s SO(1, D) representation.

Automated summary

In this article, we algebraically construct higher spin quasinormal modes in D-dimensional de Sitter spacetime using the ambient space formalism, where the modes fall into two nonunitary lowest-weight representations of so(1, D). From the perspective of local quantum field theory, the lowest-weight quasinormal modes of massless higher spin fields are generated by gauge-invariant boundary conserved currents and boundary higher-spin Weyl tensors inserted at the southern pole of the past boundary. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the quasinormal spectrum of a massless/massive spin-s field is precisely encoded in the Harish-Chandra character corresponding to the unitary massless/massive spin-s SO(1, D) representation.