Higher spin de Sitter quasinormal modes

Abstract: 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 $\mathfrak{so}(1, D)$. 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-$s$ $\text{SO}(1, D)$ representation.