Analysis of unitarity in conformal quantum gravity

DOI10.1088/1361-6382/AC8199zbMATH Open1502.83004arXiv2202.08298OpenAlexW4221139876MaRDI QIDQ5097579FDOQ5097579

Authors: Jeffrey Kuntz, Jisuke Kubo 

Publication date: 25 August 2022

Published in: Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We perform a canonical quantization of Weyl's conformal gravity by means of the covariant operator formalism and investigate the unitarity of the resulting quantum theory. After reducing the originally fourth order theory to second order in time derivatives via the introduction of an auxiliary tensor field, we identify the full Fock space of quantum states under a BRST construction that includes Faddeev-Popov ghost fields corresponding to Weyl transformations. Using the Kugo-Ojima quartet mechanism, we identify the physical subspace of quantum states and find that the subspace containing the transverse spin-2 states comes equipped with an indefinite inner product metric and a one-particle Hamiltonian that possesses only a single eigenstate. We construct the LSZ reduction formula for the S-matrix in this spin-2 subspace and find that unitarity is violated in scattering events. The explicit way in which this violation occurs represents a new view on the ghost-problem in quadratic theories of quantum gravity.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.08298

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zbMATH Keywords

ghost problemquantum gravityBRST symmetryunitarityconformal gravitycovariant quantizationquartet mechanism

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of Lie groups to the sciences; explicit representations (22E70) Bergman spaces and Fock spaces (30H20) Orthogonal and unitary groups in metric geometry (51F25) Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds (81T20) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) Quantum state spaces, operational and probabilistic concepts (81P16) Spinor and twistor methods in general relativity and gravitational theory; Newman-Penrose formalism (83C60) Conformal structures on manifolds (53C18) Canonical quantization (81S08)

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Cited In (8)

• Divergences of the scalar sector of quadratic gravity
• Ghost problems from Pauli-Villars to fourth-order quantum gravity and their resolution
• Determining the normalization of the quantum field theory vacuum, with implications for quantum gravity
• Massless and partially massless limits in quadratic gravity
• CONFORMAL FIELD THEORY ON R × S3 FROM QUANTIZED GRAVITY
• On the degrees of freedom of R2 gravity in flat spacetime
• Unitarity at the late time boundary of De Sitter
• High-energy properties of the graviton scattering in quadratic gravity

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