English

Quantizing the non-linear graviton

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-10-12 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We consider holomorphic Poisson-BF theory on twistor space. Classically, this describes self-dual Einstein gravity on space-time, but at the quantum level it is plagued by an anomaly. The anomaly corresponds to the fact that integrability of the self-dual vacuum Einstein equations does not survive in self-dual quantum gravity. We compute the anomaly polynomials in the Poisson-BF theory, as well as in this theory coupled to a holomorphic BF theory on twistor space describing self-dual Yang-Mills. We show that all anomalies may be cancelled by further coupling to a twistor field representing a type of axion on space-time. When the twistor anomalies are cancelled, all n4n\geq4-pt amplitudes vanish and integrability is restored.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.12701,
  title  = {Quantizing the non-linear graviton},
  author = {Roland Bittleston and Atul Sharma and David Skinner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.12701},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

70 pages, 12 figures; v2: clarifications added, typos corrected; v3: published in CIMP

R2 v1 2026-06-25T02:00:32.609Z