English

A 2D Stress Tensor for 4D Gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-09-27 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We use the subleading soft-graviton theorem to construct an operator TzzT_{zz} whose insertion in the four-dimensional tree-level quantum gravity S\mathcal{S}-matrix obeys the Virasoro-Ward identities of the energy momentum tensor of a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT2_2). The celestial sphere at Minkowskian null infinity plays the role of the Euclidean sphere of the CFT2_2, with the Lorentz group acting as the unbroken SL(2,C)SL(2,\mathbb{C}) subgroup.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.00282,
  title  = {A 2D Stress Tensor for 4D Gravity},
  author = {Daniel Kapec and Prahar Mitra and Ana-Maria Raclariu and Andrew Strominger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.00282},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages. v2: updated acknowledgements

R2 v1 2026-06-22T15:37:47.096Z