Renormalizing gravity: a new insight into an old problem
Abstract
It is well-known that perturbative quantum gravity is non-renormalizable. The metric or vierbein has generally been used as the variable to quantize in perturbative quantum gravity. In this essay, we show that one can use the spin connection instead, in which case it is possible to obtain a ghost-free renormalizable theory of quantum gravity. Furthermore in this approach, gravitational analogs of particle physics phenomena can be studied. In particular, we study the gravitational Higgs mechanism using spin connection as a gauge field, and show that this provides a mechanism for the effective reduction in the dimensionality of spacetime.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.05665,
title = {Renormalizing gravity: a new insight into an old problem},
author = {Saurya Das and Mir Faizal and Elias C. Vagenas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.05665},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
This essay received an honorable mention in the 2018 Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition on Gravitation; v2: change of counting of d.o.f. from (3+1) to (d+1) spacetime dimensions, references updated