No Arabic abstract
Picture yourself in the wave zone of a gravitational scattering event of two massive, spinning compact bodies (black holes, neutron stars or stars). We show that this system of genuine astrophysical interest enjoys a hidden $mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetry, at least to the order of spin-squared (quadrupole) interactions in arbitrary $D$ spacetime dimensions. Using the ${mathcal N}=2$ supersymmetric worldline action, augmented by finite-size corrections for the non-Kerr black hole case, we build a quadratic-in-spin extension to the worldline quantum field theory (WQFT) formalism introduced in our previous work, and calculate the two bodies deflection and spin kick to sub-leading order in the post-Minkowskian expansion in Newtons constant $G$. For spins aligned to the normal vector of the scattering plane we also obtain the scattering angle. All $D$-dimensional observables are derived from an eikonal phase given as the free energy of the WQFT, that is invariant under the $mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetry transformations.
We show that when the gravitational field is treated quantum-mechanically, it induces fluctuations -- noise -- in the lengths of the arms of gravitational wave detectors. The characteristics of the noise depend on the quantum state of the gravitational field, and can be calculated exactly in several interesting cases. For coherent states the noise is very small, but it can be greatly enhanced in thermal and (especially) squeezed states. Detection of this fundamental noise would constitute direct evidence for the quantization of gravity and the existence of gravitons.
We study quantum noise and decoherence induced by gravitons. We derive a Langevin equation of geodesic deviation in the presence of gravitons. The amplitude of noise correlations tells us that large squeezing is necessary to detect the noise. We also consider the decoherence of spatial superpositions of two massive particles caused by gravitons in the vacuum state and find that gravitons could give a relevant contribution to the decoherence. The decoherence induced by gravitons would offer new vistas to test quantum gravity in tabletop experiments.
The Cartan-Penrose (CP) equation is interpreted as a connection between a spinor at a point in spacetime, and a pair of holographic screens on which the information at that point may be projected. Local SUSY is thus given a physical interpretation in terms of the ambiguity of the choice of holographic screen implicit in the work of Bousso. The classical CP equation is conformally invariant, but quantization introduces metrical information via the B(ekenstein)-H(awking)-F(ischler)-S(usskind)-B(ousso) connection between area and entropy. A piece of the classical projective invariance survives as the $(-1)^F$ operation of Fermi statistics. I expand on a previously discussed formulation of quantum cosmology, using the connection between SUSY and screens.
We explicitly construct every kinematically allowed three particle graviton-graviton-$P$ and photon-photon-$P$ S-matrix in every dimension and for every choice of the little group representation of the massive particle $P$. We also explicitly construct the spacetime Lagrangian that generates each of these couplings. In the case of gravitons we demonstrate that this Lagrangian always involves (derivatives of) two factors of the Riemann tensor, and so is always of fourth or higher order in derivatives. This result verifies one of the assumptions made in the recent preprint cite{Chowdhury:2019kaq} while attempting to establish the rigidity of the Einstein tree level S-matrix within the space of local classical theories coupled to a collection of particles of bounded spin.
We have found that supersymmetry (SUSY) in curved space is broken softly. It is also found that Pauli-Villars regularization preserves the remaining symmetry, softly broken SUSY. Using it we computed the one-loop effective potential along a (classical) flat direction in a Wess-Zumino model in de Sitter space. The analysis is relevant to the Affleck-Dine mechanism for baryogenesis. The effective potential is unbounded from below: $V_{eff}(phi)to -3g^2H^2phi ^2 ln phi ^2 /16pi ^2$, where $phi$ is the scalar field along the flat direction, g is a typical coupling constant, and H is the Hubble parameter. This is identical with the effective potential which is obtained by using proper-time cutoff regularization. Since proper-time cutoff regularization is exact even at the large curvature region, the effective potential possesses softly broken SUSY and reliability in the large curvature region.