Effective graviton mass in de Sitter space

Abstract

We calculate the effective mass of gravitational perturbations induced by the interaction of the classical gravitational field with quantum matter in the background of the Poincar\'e patch of de Sitter space. Using the Schwinger-Keldysh diagrammatic technique, the one-loop effective action is calculated and it is shown that the graviton does not acquire mass for the most symmetric Bunch-Davies state. However, we have shown that even in this case, there is a nontrivial modification of the theory at one loop in the scalar sector of gravity.