English

Anomaly-mediated Scalar Gravitational Interactions and the Coupling of Conformal Sectors

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-04-02 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We investigate the anomaly-induced activation of a gauge-invariant scalar degree of freedom in General Relativity, the conformalon mode, directly at the level of 222\to2 scattering amplitudes. The analysis couples anomalous three-point functions of conformal sectors, involving gravitons (TTT)(TTT) and Abelian gauge currents (TJJ)(TJJ), through single-graviton exchange derived from the quadratic expansion of the Einstein--Hilbert action. Unlike related treatments based on the nonlocal anomaly action, these interactions are suppressed by the Planck scale. We show that the conformalon, invariant under linearized diffeomorphisms, admits an interpretation as an effective scalar correction to scattering amplitudes, both in virtual exchange channels and in effective real-emission processes. Around flat space, this behaviour arises from anomaly-induced nonlocal massless insertions on the external graviton and photon legs of the three-point functions, sewn through the scalar component of the graviton propagator in de Donder gauge. The resulting anomaly-mediated 44-point interaction reduces to contact terms, with the Planck mass setting the suppression scale. The construction consistently matches the spin decomposition of flat-space conformal Ward identities in momentum space, which determine the vertices, with the corresponding spin decomposition of the graviton propagator. In the eikonal limit, these interactions generate contact corrections to the leading logarithmic phase in impact-parameter space. We further show that anomaly-mediated 222\to2 graviton amplitudes associated with the virtual exchange of such modes exhibit a characteristic double-copy structure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.28966,
  title  = {Anomaly-mediated Scalar Gravitational Interactions and the Coupling of Conformal Sectors},
  author = {Claudio Corianò and Stefano Lionetti and Dario Melle and Leonardo Torcellini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.28966},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

77 pages, 8 figures, typo corrections