Related papers: Causality Violation, Gravitational Shockwaves and …
The amplitude A(s,t) for ultra-high energy scattering can be found in the leading eikonal approximation by considering propagation in an Aichelburg-Sexl gravitational shockwave background. Loop corrections in the QFT describing the…
Within the low-energy effective field theories of QED and gravity, the low-energy speed of light or that of gravitational waves can typically be mildly superluminal in curved spacetimes. Related to this, small scattering time advances…
Quantum quadratic gravity (QQG) produces a tree-level differential cross section for $\gamma\gamma\to\gamma\gamma$ that is well-behaved at all energies. From this we can study how the corrections to low energy scattering amplitudes are…
The idea that the existence of a consistent UV completion satisfying the fundamental axioms of local quantum field theory or string theory may impose positivity constraints on the couplings of the leading irrelevant operators in a…
We distinguish between the notions of asymptotic causality and infrared causality for gravitational effective field theories, and show that the latter gives constraints consistent with gravitational positivity bounds. We re-explore the…
Relativistic causality constrains the $S$-matrix both through its analyticity, and by imposing lower bounds on the scattering time delay. These bounds are easiest to determine for spacetimes which admit either a timelike or null Killing…
We employ the curvature expansion of the quantum effective action for gravity-matter systems to construct graviton-mediated scattering amplitudes for non-minimally coupled scalar fields in a Minkowski background. By design, the formalism…
It is currently unknown whether the laws of physics permit time travel into the past. While general relativity indicates the theoretical possibility of causality violation, it is now widely accepted that a theory of quantum gravity must…
In this note we discuss the relation between the constraints imposed by causality in the bulk of $AdS$ and the condition of positivity of the energy measured in ideal calorimeters in a collider experiment in the dual CFT. We first extend…
Vacuum polarisation in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which effectively violate the strong equivalence principle and affect the propagation of light. In the low frequency limit, Drummond and Hathrell have shown…
Astonishing cancellations take place in the calculation of high-energy scattering cross sections in quantum quadratic gravity, a quantum field theory for gravity. Tree-level differential cross sections that are minimally inclusive behave as…
Local superluminal photon propagation arises at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha/m_e^2)$ in the Drummond Hathrell (DH) effective action obtained by integrating out the electron in QED coupled to gravity. Whether such superluminality implies a genuine…
We study causality in gravitational systems beyond the classical limit. Using on-shell methods, we consider the one-loop corrections from charged particles to the photon energy-momentum tensor - the self-stress - that controls the quantum…
Physical principles such as unitarity, causality, and locality can constrain the space of consistent effective field theories (EFTs) by imposing two-sided bounds on the allowed values of Wilson coefficients. In this paper, we consider the…
We show how uncertainty in the causal structure of field theory is essentially inevitable when one includes quantum gravity. This includes the fact that lightcones are ill-defined in such a theory. This effect is small in the effective…
Under the assumption that a UV theory does not display superluminal behavior, we ask what constraints on superluminality are satisfied in the effective field theory (EFT). We study two examples of effective theories: quantum electrodynamics…
Quantum phenomena such as vacuum polarisation in curved spacetime induce interactions between photons and gravity with quite striking consequences, including the violation of the strong equivalence principle and the apparent prediction of…
Gravitons are the quantum counterparts of gravitational waves in low-energy theories of gravity. Using Feynman rules one can compute scattering amplitudes describing the interaction between gravitons and other fields. Here, we consider the…
Effective field theories (EFTs) parametrize our ignorance of the underlying UV theory through their Wilson coefficients. However, not all values of these coefficients are consistent with fundamental physical principles. In this paper, we…
Lorentz violation (LV) is predicted by some quantum gravity (QG) candidates, wherein the canonical energy-momentum dispersion relation, $E^2=p^2+m^2$, is modified. Consequently, new phenomenons beyond the standard model are predicted.…