Scale and conformal invariance on (A)dS spacetimes

Abstract

We examine the question of scale versus conformal invariance on maximally symmetric curved backgrounds and study general two-derivative conformally invariant free theories of vectors and tensors. For spacetime dimension D>4, these conformal theories can be diagonalized into standard massive fields in which unbroken conformal symmetry nontrivially mixes components of different spins. In D=4, the tensor case becomes a conformal theory mixing a partially massless spin-2 field with a massless spin-1 field. For massless linearized gravity in D=4, we confirm through direct calculation that correlation functions of gauge-invariant operators take the conformally invariant form, despite the absence of standard conformal symmetry at the level of the action. Published by the American Physical Society 2024