English

Perturbatively renormalizable quantum gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-12-04 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) requires Euclidean signature. The conformal factor of the metric then has a wrong-sign kinetic term, which has a profound effect on its RG properties. In particular around the Gaussian fixed point, it supports a Hilbert space of renormalizable interactions involving arbitrarily high powers of the gravitational fluctuations. These interactions are characterised by being exponentially suppressed for large field amplitude, perturbative in Newton's constant but non-perturbative in Planck's constant. By taking a limit to the boundary of the Hilbert space, diffeomorphism invariance is recovered whilst retaining renormalizability. Thus the so-called conformal factor instability points the way to constructing a perturbatively renormalizable theory of quantum gravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.03834,
  title  = {Perturbatively renormalizable quantum gravity},
  author = {Tim R. Morris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.03834},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages; Received Honourable mention in Gravity Research Foundation essay competition-2018

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:20:07.563Z