English

Soft synchronous gauge in the perturbative gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-07-02 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

An attempt to directly use the synchronous gauge (g0λ=δ0λg_{0 \lambda} = - \delta_{0 \lambda}) in perturbative gravity leads to a singularity at p0=0p_0 = 0 in the graviton propagator. This is similar to the singularity in the propagator for Yang-Mills fields AλaA^a_\lambda in the temporal gauge (A0a=0A^a_0 = 0). There the singularity was softened, obtaining this gauge as the limit at ε0\varepsilon \to 0 of the gauge nλAλa=0n^\lambda A^a_\lambda = 0, nλ=(1,ε(jj)1k)n^\lambda = (1, - \varepsilon (\partial^j \partial_j )^{- 1} \partial^k ) . Then the singularities at p0=0p_0 = 0 are replaced by negative powers of p0±iεp_0 \pm i \varepsilon, and thus we bypass these poles in a certain way. Now consider a similar condition on nλgλμn^\lambda g_{\lambda \mu} in perturbative gravity, which becomes the synchronous gauge at ε0\varepsilon \to 0. Unlike the Yang-Mills case, the contribution of the Faddeev-Popov ghosts to the effective action is nonzero, and we calculate it. In this calculation, an intermediate regularization is needed, and we assume the discrete structure of the theory at short distances for that. The effect of this contribution is to change the functional integral measure or, for example, to add non-pole terms to the propagator. This contribution vanishes at ε0\varepsilon \to 0. Thus, we effectively have the synchronous gauge with the resolved singularities at p0=0p_0 = 0, where only the physical components gjkg_{j k} are active and there is no need to calculate the ghost contribution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.17119,
  title  = {Soft synchronous gauge in the perturbative gravity},
  author = {V. M. Khatsymovsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.17119},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

15 pages, added discussion of the importance of the effective ghost action being $O(\varepsilon^2)$ so that it can be ignored at $\varepsilon \to 0$

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:03:51.968Z