Fermion Mass Generation in de Sitter Space

We study the one-loop radiative corrections for massless fermions in de Sitter space induced by a Yukawa coupling to a light, nearly minimally coupled scalar field. We show that the fermions acquire a mass. Next we construct the corresponding (nonlocal) effective fermionic action, which – in contrast to the case of a massive Dirac fermion – preserves chirality. Nevertheless, the resulting fermion dynamics is precisely that of a Dirac fermion with a mass proportional to the expansion rate. Our finding supports the view that an observer or a test particle responds to a scalar field in inflation by shifting its energy rather than seeing a thermal bath.