Causality constraints on corrections to the graviton three-point coupling

By Xián O. Camanho, J. Edelstein, J. Maldacena, A. Zhiboedov. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2014

608 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We consider higher derivative corrections to the graviton three-point coupling within a weakly coupled theory of gravity. Lorentz invariance allows further structures beyond the one present in the Einstein theory. We argue that these are constrained by causality. We devise a thought experiment involving a high energy scattering process which leads to causality violation if the graviton three-point vertex contains the additional structures. This violation cannot be fixed by adding conventional particles with spins J ≤ 2. But, it can be fixed by adding an infinite tower of extra massive particles with higher spins, J > 2. In AdS theories this implies a constraint on the conformal anomaly coefficients a−cc≲1Δgap2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \left|\frac{a-c}{c}\right|\lesssim \frac{1}{\Delta_{\mathrm{gap}}^2} $$\end{document} n terms of Δgap, the dimension of the lightest single trace operator with spin J > 2. For inflation, or de Sitter-like solutions, it indicates the existence of massive higher spin particles if the gravity wave non-gaussianity deviates significantly from the one computed in the Einstein theory.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9d7cacb6e8d846f6e83c8cf33d400889ccfb4e3

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Citations in the corpus

A general proof of the quantum null energy condition (2017, methodology): “This would involve moving to very large modular flow, still maintaining s lnN where we move into a controlled Regge like regime where we expect to reproduce the bulk physics of a theory with a gravitational dual [47, 107–109].”
Holographic Quantum Matter (2016, background): “This often leads to ghosts (fields with wrong-sign kinetic terms) or other pathologies [121].”
Loops in AdS from conformal field theory (2016, background): “Knowing loop amplitudes in a given bulk theory would open the door to nonplanar extensions of dynamical aspects of holography and the conformal bootstrap [34–50].”
A bound on chaos (2015, background): “For theories with gravity duals this implies the scattering bound [33] mentioned in section 3.”
Bounding the space of holographic CFTs with chaos (2016, background): “In AdSD>3, there are no-go results: namely, one cannot add a finite number of either massive or massless higher spin fields, for reasons of causality [21] and – in the case of massless fields – symmetry [22, 23].”
An algebraic approach to the analytic bootstrap (2015, unknown): “This together with [26] may be useful for deriving [27] directly from bootstrap.”
On entanglement spreading in chaotic systems (2016, background): “Higher derivative theories require completion by massive states such as strings [37].”
Looking for a bulk point (2015, background): “This bound is equivalent to the statement that the scattering phase δ(s, b) does not grow faster than s [51].”
Analyticity in spin in conformal theories (2017, background): “This could also help generalize the formula to external operators with spin; such a generalization could shed new light on the relation between the a and c central charges in theories with AdS gravity dual [42, 43].”
Causality constraints in conformal field theory (2015, background): “The more recent CEMZ constraints [6] are much stronger, implying a ≈ c up to corrections suppressed by the mass of higher spin particles.”
Localized shocks (2014, background): “36 [39], and the recent work of [40] suggests that one should only take seriously the linear correction.”