Existence and Uniqueness of Weak Homotopy Moment Maps

In this paper we show that the classical results on the existence and uniqueness of moment maps in symplectic geometry generalize directly to weak homotopy moment maps in multisym- plectic geometry. In particular, we show that their existence and uniqueness is governed by a Lie algebra cohomology complex which reduces to the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex in the symplectic setupComment: Incorporated the referee's suggestions and fixed some typos. To appear in Journal of Geometry and Physic

Instantons, Twistors, and Emergent Gravity

Motivated by potential applications to holography on space-times of positive curvature, and by the successful twistor description of scattering amplitudes, we propose a new dual matrix formulation of N = 4 gauge theory on S(4). The matrix model is defined by taking the low energy limit of a holomorphic Chern-Simons theory on CP(3|4), in the presence of a large instanton flux. The theory comes with a choice of S(4) radius L and a parameter N controlling the overall size of the matrices. The flat space variant of the 4D effective theory arises by taking the large N scaling limit of the matrix model, with l_pl^2 ~ L^2 / N held fixed. Its massless spectrum contains both spin one and spin two excitations, which we identify with gluons and gravitons. As shown in the companion paper, the matrix model correlation functions of both these excitations correctly reproduce the corresponding MHV scattering amplitudes. We present evidence that the scaling limit defines a gravitational theory with a finite Planck length. In particular we find that in the l_pl -> 0 limit, the matrix model makes contact with the CSW rules for amplitudes of pure gauge theory, which are uncontaminated by conformal supergravity. We also propose a UV completion for the system by embedding the matrix model in the physical superstring.Comment: v2: 64 pages, 3 figures, references added, typos correcte