Spin Hall effect and Berry curvature of gravitons from quantum field theory
High Energy Physics - Theory
2026-05-20 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Optics
Abstract
Based on quantum field theory of linearized gravity, we formulate the Wigner function for right- and left-handed gravitons. By applying the Wigner transformation to the second-order metric perturbations in the graviton energy-momentum tensor obtained from the Einstein-Hilbert action, we demonstrate the emergence of the spin Hall effect of gravitons in curved spacetime. This effect originates from the Berry curvature of gravitons, which has opposite signs for right- and left-handed helicities, and leads to a helicity-dependent splitting of the graviton energy Hall current. The magnitude of this splitting is found to be exactly twice that of the corresponding spin Hall current for photons.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.19817,
title = {Spin Hall effect and Berry curvature of gravitons from quantum field theory},
author = {Ritsuki Ito and Kazuya Mameda and Naoki Yamamoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.19817},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
17 pages