Using the gauge invariant flow equation for quantum gravity we compute how the strength of gravity depends on the length or energy scale. The fixed point value of the scale-dependent Planck mass in units of the momentum scale has an important impact on the question, which parameters of the Higgs potential can be predicted in the asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity? For the standard model and a large class of theories with additional particles the quartic Higgs coupling is an irrelevant parameter at the ultraviolet fixed point. This makes the ratio between the Higgs boson and the top-quark mass predictable.
We study whether the inflation is realized based on the radion gauge-Higgs potential obtained from the one-loop calculation in the 5-dimensional gravity coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge theory. We show that the gauge-Higgs can give rise to inflation in accord with the astrophysical data and the radion plays a role in fixing the values of physical parameters. We clarify the reason why the radion dominated inflation and the hybrid inflation cannot occur in our framework.
We propose a method to compute the scattering angle for classical black hole scattering directly from two massive particle irreducible diagrams in a heavy-mass effective field theory approach to general relativity, without the need of subtracting iteration terms. The amplitudes in this effective theory are constructed using a recently proposed novel colour-kinematic/double copy for tree-level two-scalar, multi-graviton amplitudes, where the BCJ numerators are gauge invariant and local with respect to the massless gravitons. These tree amplitudes, together with graviton tree amplitudes, enter the construction of the required $D$-dimensional loop integrands and allow for a direct extraction of contributions relevant for classical physics. In particular the soft/heavy-mass expansions of full integrands is circumvented, and all iterating contributions can be dropped from the get go. We use this method to compute the scattering angle up to third post-Minkowskian order in four dimensions, including radiation reaction contributions, also providing the expression of the corresponding integrand in $D$ dimensions.
We show that the perturbative expansion of general gauge theories can be expressed in terms of gauge invariant variables to all orders in perturbations. In this we generalize techniques developed in gauge invariant cosmological perturbation theory, using Bardeen variables, by interpreting the passing over to gauge invariant fields as a homotopy transfer of the strongly homotopy Lie algebras encoding the gauge theory. This is illustrated for Yang-Mills theory, gravity on flat and cosmological backgrounds and for the massless sector of closed string theory. The perturbation lemma yields an algorithmic procedure to determine the higher corrections of the gauge invariant variables and the action in terms of these.
We describe a class of diffeomorphism invariant SU(N) gauge theories in N^2 dimensions, together with some matter couplings. These theories have (N^2-3)(N^2-1) local degrees of freedom, and have the unusual feature that the constraint associated with time reparametrizations is identically satisfied. A related class of SU(N) theories in N^2-1 dimensions has the constraint algebra of general relativity, but has more degrees of freedom. Non-perturbative quantization of the first type of theory via SU(N) spin networks is briefly outlined.
Gauge-flation is a recently proposed model in which inflation is driven solely by a non-Abelian gauge field thanks to a specific higher order derivative operator. The nature of the operator is such that it does not introduce ghosts. We compute the cosmological scalar and tensor perturbations for this model, improving over an existing computation. We then confront these results with the Planck data. The model is characterized by the quantity gamma = (g^2 Q^2)/H^2 (where g is the gauge coupling constant, Q the vector vev, and H the Hubble rate). For gamma < 2, the scalar perturbations show a strong tachyonic instability. In the stable region, the scalar power spectrum n_s is too low at small gamma, while the tensor-to-scalar ratio r is too high at large gamma. No value of gamma leads to acceptable values for n_s and r, and so the model is ruled out by the CMB data. The same behavior with gamma was obtained in Chromo-natural inflation, a model in which inflation is driven by a pseudo-scalar coupled to a non-Abelian gauge field. When the pseudo-scalar can be integrated out, one recovers the model of Gauge-flation plus corrections. It was shown that this identification is very accurate at the background level, but differences emerged in the literature concerning the perturbations of the two models. On the contrary, our results show that the analogy between the two models continues to be accurate also at the perturbative level.