The radial gauge propagators in quantum gravity

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to derive gauge theory propagators with sharp gauge fixing and applies it to quantum gravity in the radial gauge across dimensions, revealing vanishing propagators in 3D consistent with no gravitons.

Contribution

It introduces a general procedure for extracting propagators with sharp gauge fixing and applies it specifically to quantum gravity in the radial gauge across dimensions.

Findings

In 3D, propagators vanish except for singular collinear parts.

The method works in both first and second order formalisms.

Results align with the absence of propagating gravitons in 3D.

Abstract

We give a general procedure for extracting the propagators in gauge theories in presence of a sharp gauge fixing and we apply it to derive the propagators in quantum gravity in the radial gauge, both in the first and in the second order formalism in any space-time dimension. In the three dimensional case such propagators vanish except for singular collinear contributions, in agreement with the absence of propagating gravitons.