The graviton self-energy in thermal quantum gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of graviton self-energy in thermal quantum gravity, emphasizing the independence of physical results from field parametrization and providing explicit high-temperature expressions.

Contribution

It establishes the parametrization independence of the physical graviton self-energy and derives explicit high-temperature one-loop expressions.

Findings

Physical graviton self-energy is independent of field parametrization.

Explicit one-loop graviton self-energy at high temperature is derived.

The dependence of the 2-point function on graviton field choice is clarified.

Abstract

We show generally that in thermal gravity, the one-particle irreducible 2-point function depends on the choice of the basic graviton fields. We derive the relevant properties of a physical graviton self-energy, which is independent of the parametrization of the graviton field. An explicit expression for the graviton self-energy at high-temperature is given to one-loop order.