English

Gravity from holomorphic discs and celestial $Lw_{1+\infty}$ symmetries

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-10-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

In split or Kleinian signature, twistor constructions parametrize solutions to both gauge and gravity self-duality (SD) equation from twistor data that can be expressed in terms of free smooth data without gauge freedom. Here the corresponding constructions are given for asymptotically flat SD gravity providing a fully nonlinear encoding of the asymptotic gravitational data in terms of a real homogeneous generating function hh on the real twistor space. Geometrically hh determines a nonlinear deformation of the location of the real twistor space \RP3\RP^3 inside the complex twistor space \CP3\CP^3. This presentation gives an optimal presentation of Strominger's recently discovered Lw1+Lw_{1+\infty} celestial symmetries. These, when real, act locally as passive Poisson diffeomorphisms on the real twistor space. However, when imaginary, such Poisson transformations are active symmetries, and generate changes to the gravitational field by deforming the location of the real slice of the twistor space. Gravity amplitudes for the full, non-self-dual Einstein gravity, arise as correlators of a chiral twistor sigma model. This is reformulated for split signature as a theory of holomorphic discs in twistor space whose boundaries lie on the deformed real slice determined by hh. Real Lw1+Lw_{1+\infty} symmetries act oas gauge symmetries, but imaginary generators yield graviton vertex operators that generate gravitons in the perturbative expansion. A generating function for the all plus 1-loop amplitude, an analogous framework for Yang-Mills, possible interpretations in Lorentz signature and similar open string formulations of twistor and ambitwistor strings in 4d in split signature, are briefly discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.10895,
  title  = {Gravity from holomorphic discs and celestial $Lw_{1+\infty}$ symmetries},
  author = {Lionel Mason},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.10895},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

26 pages, 2 figures and appendices

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:46:29.393Z