Twistors, CFT and Holography

According to one of many equivalent definitions of twistors a (null) twistor is a null geodesic in Minkowski spacetime. Null geodesics can intersect at points (events). The idea of Penrose was to think of a spacetime point as a derived concept: points are obtained by considering the incidence of twistors. One needs two twistors to obtain a point. Twistor is thus a ``square root'' of a point. In the present paper we entertain the idea of quantizing the space of twistors. Twistors, and thus also spacetime points become operators acting in a certain Hilbert space. The algebra of functions on spacetime becomes an operator algebra. We are therefore led to the realm of non-commutative geometry. This non-commutative geometry turns out to be related to conformal field theory and holography. Our construction sheds an interesting new light on bulk/boundary dualities.Comment: 21 pages, figure

Gravitons and a complex of differential operators

Gravity is now understood to become simple on-shell. We sketch how it becomes simple also off-shell, when reformulated appropriately. Thus, we describe a simple Lagrangian for gravitons that makes use of a certain complex of differential operators. The Lagrangian is constructed analogously to that of Maxwell's theory, just using a different complex. The complex, and therefore also our description of gravitons, makes sense on any half-conformally flat four-dimensional manifold.Comment: 8 pages, 2 diagram

GR uniqueness and deformations

In the metric formulation gravitons are described with the parity symmetric $S_+^2\otimes S_-^2$ representation of Lorentz group. General Relativity is then the unique theory of interacting gravitons with second order field equations. We show that if a chiral $S_+^3\otimes S_-$ representation is used instead, the uniqueness is lost, and there is an infinite-parametric family of theories of interacting gravitons with second order field equations. We use the language of graviton scattering amplitudes, and show how the uniqueness of GR is avoided using simple dimensional analysis. The resulting distinct from GR gravity theories are all parity asymmetric, but share the GR MHV amplitudes. They have new all same helicity graviton scattering amplitudes at every graviton order. The amplitudes with at least one graviton of opposite helicity continue to be determinable by the BCFW recursion.Comment: v2: published version, 19 pages, description of the complexified setting expande

One-loop beta-function for an infinite-parameter family of gauge theories

We continue to study an infinite-parametric family of gauge theories with an arbitrary function of the self-dual part of the field strength as the Lagrangian. The arising one-loop divergences are computed using the background field method. We show that they can all be absorbed by a local redefinition of the gauge field, as well as multiplicative renormalisations of the couplings. Thus, this family of theories is one-loop renormalisable. The infinite set of beta-functions for the couplings is compactly stored in a renormalisation group flow for a single function of the curvature. The flow is obtained explicitly.Comment: 17 pages, no figure

Gravity as BF theory plus potential

Spin foam models of quantum gravity are based on Plebanski's formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory. We give an alternative formulation of gravity as BF theory plus a certain potential term for the B-field. When the potential is taken to be infinitely steep one recovers general relativity. For a generic potential the theory still describes gravity in that it propagates just two graviton polarizations. The arising class of theories is of the type amenable to spin foam quantization methods, and, we argue, may allow one to come to terms with renormalization in the spin foam context.Comment: 7 pages, published in Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Quantum Gravity and Noncommutative Geometry (Lisbon, Portugal

Metric Lagrangians with two propagating degrees of freedom

There exists a large class of generally covariant metric Lagrangians that contain only local terms and describe two propagating degrees of freedom. Trivial examples can be be obtained by applying a local field redefinition to the Lagrangian of general relativity, but we show that the class of two propagating degrees of freedom Lagrangians is much larger. Thus, we exhibit a large family of non-local field redefinitions that map the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian into ones containing only local terms. These redefinitions have origin in the topological shift symmetry of BF theory, to which GR is related in Plebanski formulation, and can be computed order by order as expansions in powers of the Riemann curvature. At its lowest non-trivial order such a field redefinition produces the (Riemann)^3 invariant that arises as the two-loop quantum gravity counterterm. Possible implications for quantum gravity are discussed.Comment: 4 page