Quantum Gravitational Effects on Massive Fermions during Inflation I

Abstract: We compute the one loop graviton contribution to the self-energy of a very light fermion on a locally de Sitter background. This result can be used to study the effect that a small mass has on the propagation of fermions through the sea of infrared gravitons generated by inflation. We employ dimensional regularization and obtain a fully renormalized result by absorbing all divergences with BPHZ counterterms. An interesting technical aspect of this computation is the need for two noninvariant counterterms owing to the breaking of de Sitter invariance by our gauge condition.