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arXiv · 2608.26242

The facts on quantum self-dual Einstein gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills theory

Noah Miller
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Abstract

Self-dual Einstein gravity is a one-loop exact, UV and IR finite, diffeomorphism invariant, non-unitary theory of quantum gravity in four dimensions. The only non-trivial amplitudes are the one-loop-all-plus amplitudes, and they are equal to those of pure Einstein gravity. In these notes we review SDG and SDYM pedagogically. We walk the reader through key calculations, fill in some gaps in the literature, and point out directions for future research. Topics include: derivation of the self-dual actions from the full Einstein gravity/YM actions in lightcone gauge, decoupling of ghosts, Berends-Giele currents, vanishing of tree-level-one-minus amplitudes, celestial $Lw_{1+\infty}$ symmetry, perturbiners, double-off-shell current calculation of one-loop-all-plus SDYM and SDG amplitudes, dimension shifting, unitarity cuts, the BDPR gravity formula, one-loop color ordering, and the covariant formulations of the self-dual theories as well as their their gauge fixing. We also review some selected results from the celestial holography program, and briefly comment on an all-n expression for the one-loop-one-minus gravity amplitudes.

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Noah Miller. 2026-08-26. The facts on quantum self-dual Einstein gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills theory. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.26242

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