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Gerardo O. Depaola

Publications and source records attributed to Gerardo O. Depaola.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Ultraviolet-Finite Perturbative Expansion of Quantum Gravity at Null Infinity

We present a perturbative formulation of quantum gravity for asymptotically flat vacuum spacetimes based on the Null Surface Formulation (NSF), in which the expansion is ultraviolet-finite term by term up to the orders computed, without the need for renormalization. The outgoing Bondi shear operators are constructed explicitly up to fourth order, with interaction kernels determined recursively from on-shell gravitational data at null infinity. Ultraviolet finiteness at each order follows from the on-shell structure of the construction and the restriction of all integrations to the compact celestial sphere, eliminating off-shell propagators. The map between the in and out states admits a perturbative construction, and unitarity is verified explicitly up to fourth order. The outgoing operators satisfy the same commutation relations as the incoming ones, indicating that the transformation is canonical and consistent with the unitary implementation. Collinear configurations give rise to infrared singularities, as expected in massless quantum field theories, but do not affect the ultraviolet behavior established here. In coherent states, the expectation value of the shear reproduces the known finite classical graviton scattering at lowest nontrivial order. These results provide a perturbative framework for quantum gravity with improved ultraviolet behavior relative to the covariant approach.

hep-th↗

A Pair Production Telescope for Medium-Energy Gamma-Ray Polarimetry

We describe the science motivation and development of a pair production telescope for medium-energy gamma-ray polarimetry. Our instrument concept, the Advanced Energetic Pair Telescope (AdEPT), takes advantage of the Three-Dimensional Track Imager, a low-density gaseous time projection chamber, to achieve angular resolution within a factor of two of the pair production kinematics limit (~0.6 deg at 70 MeV), continuum sensitivity comparable with the Fermi-LAT front detector (<3x10-6 MeV cm-2 s-1 at 70 MeV), and minimum detectable polarization less than 10% for a 10 millicrab source in 106 seconds.

astro-ph.IM↗

A method to determine the polarization of high energy gamma-rays

A method to determine the polarization direction of a very high energy (50 MeV - 30 GeV), linearly polarized gamma ray is analyzed and discussed. We study the differential cross section for pair production and show that the only relevant piece of information comes from the reconstruction of the pair trajectory. In particular the polarization information is coded in the azimuthal distribution of the created pair. We show that the Azimuthal Ratio (AR), defined as the ratio of produced pairs parallel to the polarization vector to pairs perpendicular to this vector, yields a very practical method to determine incoming polarization. We investigate the behavior of this function for different angular resolutions of the measuring apparatus and different energies of the incoming pairs.

astro-ph↗