Bellazzini, Brando and Cheung, Clifford and Remmen, Grant N. (2016) Quantum Gravity Constraints from Unitarity and Analyticity. Physical Review D, 93 (6). Art. No. 064076. ISSN 2470-0010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.064076. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20151022-115252221
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Abstract
We derive rigorous bounds on corrections to Einstein gravity using unitarity and analyticity of graviton scattering amplitudes. In D≥4 spacetime dimensions, these consistency conditions mandate positive coefficients for certain quartic curvature operators. We systematically enumerate all such positivity bounds in D=4 and D=5 before extending to D≥6. Afterwards, we derive positivity bounds for supersymmetric operators and verify that all of our constraints are satisfied by weakly coupled string theories. Among quadratic curvature operators, we find that the Gauss-Bonnet term in D≥5 is inconsistent unless new degrees of freedom enter at the natural cutoff scale defined by the effective theory. Our bounds apply to perturbative ultraviolet completions of gravity.
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Additional Information: | © 2016 American Physical Society. Received 5 January 2016; published 29 March 2016. We thank Nima Arkani-Hamed and John Schwarz for useful discussions and comments. B. B. is supported in part by the MIUR-FIRB Grant No. RBFR12H1MW, by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under Contract No. ANR 2010 BLANC 0413 01, and by the ERC Starting Grant agreement No. 278234 “NewDark” project. C. C. is supported by a Sloan Research Fellowship and a DOE Early Career Award under Grant No. DE-SC0010255. G. N. R. is supported by a Hertz Graduate Fellowship and a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1144469. B. B. and C. C. thank the Aspen Center for Physics and the Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics (MIAPP) of the DFG cluster of excellence “Origin and Structure of the Universe” for their hospitality and support while this work was in progress. | ||||||||||||||||
Group: | Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics | ||||||||||||||||
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Issue or Number: | 6 | ||||||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevD.93.064076 | ||||||||||||||||
Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20151022-115252221 | ||||||||||||||||
Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20151022-115252221 | ||||||||||||||||
Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | ||||||||||||||||
ID Code: | 61420 | ||||||||||||||||
Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | ||||||||||||||||
Deposited By: | Joy Painter | ||||||||||||||||
Deposited On: | 22 Oct 2015 20:27 | ||||||||||||||||
Last Modified: | 10 Nov 2021 22:48 |
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