Infrared Behavior and Gauge Artifacts in de Sitter Spacetime: The Photon Field

We study the infrared (long-distance) behavior of the free photon field in de Sitter spacetime. Using a two-parameter family of gauge-fixing terms, we show that the infrared (IR) behavior of the two-point function is highly gauge-dependent and ranges from vanishing to growing. This situation is in disagreement with its counterpart in flat spacetime, where the two-point function vanishes in the IR region for any choice of the gauge-fixing parameters. A criterion to isolate the physical part of the two-point function is given and is shown to lead to a well-behaved two-point function in the IR region.