On the consistency of de Sitter vacua

Abstract

In this paper the consistency of the de Sitter invariant $\alpha $-vacua, which have been introduced as simple tools to study the effects of transplanckian physics, is investigated. In particular possible non renormalization problems are discussed, as well as non standard properties of Greens functions. We also discuss the non thermal properties of the $\alpha $-vacua and the necessity of $\alpha$ to change. The conclusion is that non of these problems necessarily exclude an application of the $\alpha $-vacua to inflation.