Pure Connection Formalism for Gravity: Linearized Theory

TL;DR

This paper presents a gauge-theoretic, simplified linearized formalism for gravitons using an SL(2,C) connection, with a focus on reality conditions and a mode decomposition for amplitude calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel connection-based description of gravitons that reduces complexity and clarifies reality conditions, facilitating future amplitude computations.

Findings

Simpler gauge-theoretic Lagrangian for gravitons.

A new reality condition relating the connection and its derivatives.

Mode decomposition of the connection field for scattering amplitudes.

Abstract

We give a description of gravitons in terms of an SL(2,C) connection field. The gauge-theoretic Lagrangian for gravitons is simpler than the metric one. Moreover, all components of the connection field have the same sign in front of their kinetic term, unlike what happens in the metric formalism. The gauge-theoretic description is also more economic than the standard one because the Lagrangian only depends on 8 components of the field per spacetime point as compared to 10 in the Einstein-Hilbert case. Particular care is paid to the treatment of the reality conditions that guarantee that one is dealing with a system with a hermitian Hamiltonian. We give general arguments explaining why the connection cannot be taken to be real, and then describe a reality condition that relates the hermitian conjugate of the connection to its (second) derivative. This is quite analogous to the treatment of fermions where one describes them by a second-order in derivatives Klein-Gordon Lagrangian, with an additional first-order reality condition (Dirac equation) imposed. We find many other parallels with fermions, e.g. the fact that the action of parity on the connection is related to the hermitian conjugation. Our main result is the mode decomposition of the connection field, which is to be used in forthcoming works for computations of graviton scattering amplitudes.