English

Single-minus graviton tree amplitudes are nonzero

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-03-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Single-minus tree-level nn-graviton scattering amplitudes are revisited. Often presumed to vanish, they are shown here to be nonvanishing for certain "half-collinear" configurations existing in Klein space or for complexified momenta. A Berends-Giele recursion relation for these amplitudes is derived and solved in a form involving a sum over trees. In a restricted kinematic decay region, this solution simplifies significantly to an (n2)(n{-}2)-fold product of soft factors. It is further shown in this region that, combined with suitable analyticity assumptions, the nn-graviton amplitude is generated by a recursive Lw1+\mathcal{L}w_{1+\infty} Ward identity with the three-graviton amplitude as a seed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.04330,
  title  = {Single-minus graviton tree amplitudes are nonzero},
  author = {Alfredo Guevara and Alexandru Lupsasca and David Skinner and Andrew Strominger and Kevin Weil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.04330},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages, no figures. v2: minor edits

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:03:30.871Z