de Sitter horizon edge partition functions
Y. T. Albert Law · Physical review. D/Physical review. D. · 2026
One-loop S d + 1 path integrals were shown to factorize into two parts: a bulk thermal ideal gas partition function in a d S d + 1 static patch and an edge partition function associated with degrees of freedom living on S d − 1 . Here, we analyze the so ( d ) structure of the edge partition functions for massive and massless totally symmetric tensors of arbitrary rank in any d ≥ 3 . For linearized Einstein gravity on S d + 1 , we find that the edge partition function receives contributions from shift-symmetric vector and scalar fields on S d − 1 , suggesting a possible interpretation in terms of an embedded S d − 1 brane.