New infra-red enhancements in 4-derivative gravity

Abstract

4-derivative gravity provides a renormalizable theory of quantum gravity at the price of introducing a physical ghost, which could admit a sensible positive-energy quantization. To understand its physics, we compute ghost-mediated scatterings among matter particles at tree-level, finding a new power-like infra-red enhancement typical of 4-derivative theories, that we dub '$ghostrahlung$'. Super-Planckian scatterings get downgraded to Planckian by radiating hard gravitons and ghosts, which are weakly coupled and carry away the energy.

20 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Black Holes in Higher-Derivative Gravity
• Quadratic Gravity
• Infrared Divergences in QED, Revisited
• Black Hole Formation and Classicalization in Ultra-Planckian 2 -> N Scattering
• Causality as an emergent macroscopic phenomenon: The Lee-Wick O(N) model
• Solution to the ghost problem in fourth order derivative theories
• Quantum Gravity, Fakeons And Microcausality
• On the Quantisation of Complex Higher Derivative Theories and Avoiding the Ostrogradsky Ghost
• Gauge Assisted Quadratic Gravity: A Framework for UV Complete Quantum Gravity
• Lee-Wick Theories at High Temperature
• Asymptotic dynamics, large gauge transformations and infrared symmetries

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Metastability in Quadratic Gravity
• Scale-Invariant Quadratic Gravity and Inflation in the Palatini Formalism
• Quasi-Conformal Models and the Early Universe
• Dimensional Transmutation in Gravity and Cosmology
• Graviton-Mediated Scattering Amplitudes from the Quantum Effective Action
• Ultra-Planckian scattering from a QFT for gravity
• A non-Perturbative and Background-Independent Formulation of Quadratic Gravity
• Horizonless ultracompact objects and dark matter in quadratic gravity
• Fractal geometry of higher derivative gravity
• Emergent gravity from hidden sectors and TT deformations
• Ultra-Planckian quark and gluon scattering in agravity
• Strict renormalizability as a paradigm for fundamental physics
• Mass gap in non-perturbative quadratic ${\mathcal{R}}^2$ gravity via Dyson-Schwinger
• Batalin-Fradkin-Vilkovisky Quantization of Quadratic Gravity
• On the physical running of the electric charge in a dimensionless theory of gravity
• Scattering amplitudes in dimensionless quadratic gravity coupled to QED
• Review of strongly coupled regimes in gravity with Dyson-Schwinger approach
• Dressed propagators, fakeon self-energy and peak uncertainty