arXiv subjects

Iberê Kuntz

Publications and source records attributed to Iberê Kuntz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Off-shell equivalence in quantum field theory and gravity

Field redefinitions connect many formulations of the same physics, but the standard equivalence theorem is an on-shell result and cannot be used to decide when two quantum descriptions are equivalent off shell. This paper develops an operational criterion for that problem in terms of the Vilkovisky--DeWitt effective action. The central idea is that equivalence should be tested on scalar observables built by pairing configuration-space tensors with admissible probes. This makes the criterion sensitive to the observable class under consideration and separates the usual on-shell notion of equivalence from the stronger off-shell notions needed in gravity, cosmology and non-equilibrium quantum field theory. Metric $f(R)$ gravity and a scalar field theory example serve as prototypes, showing how the formal criterion distinguishes local, branchwise and genuinely global equivalence. In particular, we show that metric $f(R)$ gravity and its auxiliary-field reformulation yield the same quantum theory when the auxiliary constraint is enforced in the path integral. This is distinct from quantizing the corresponding scalar--tensor action with the metric and scalar treated as independent integration variables, which defines a different quantum theory. Apparent quantum inequivalences can then be traced to comparisons between different quantum objects, rather than to a failure of actual equivalences. This leads to general and precise notions of local and global equivalence under both field redefinitions and auxiliary-variable extensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

The effective field theory of the gravitational functional measure

The gravitational path integral measure has been the subject of an increasing interest lately, and no conclusive answer yet exists for its correct form. In this paper, we adopt effective field theory techniques to shed light on this issue. We build the configuration-space metric as an energy expansion, including all possible terms that satisfy the underlying symmetries, and use it to define a Riemannian measure. We study the running of the free parameters that show up in this expansion at leading order, which corresponds to the DeWitt metric with parameter $λ$. We show that a flat configuration space is excluded on unitarity grounds. The renormalization group contains one UV fixed point at $λ=-1$, thus allowing for the UV completion of the measure sector. This fixed point corresponds to the value obtained by identifying DeWitt's metric from the kinetic term of general relativity, a standard procedure in the literature that otherwise lacks physical motivation. Our results provide such a justification from first principles.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Cosmological phase transitions from the functional measure

We investigate how competitive gravitational wave detectors can be to current and near-future colliders in probing a model where the new physics is completely encapsulated in a modified scalar sector. For this, we study a model where an additional logarithmic term arises in the scalar potential due to a non-trivial path integral measure, which is constructed using effective field theory. This new term alters the dynamics of cosmological phase transitions and could lead to potentially detectable gravitational waves from the early Universe. Our results confirm the expectation that the intensity of such spectrum is highly correlated to the scalar field's self-coupling, and that gravitational wave experiments could therefore be used to probe these couplings with an accuracy competitive with the projected sensitivity of near-future colliders.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Euclidean actions and static black hole entropy in teleparallel theories

It is well-known that the results by Bekenstein, Gibbons and Hawking on the thermodynamics of black holes can be reproduced quite simply in the Euclidean path integral approach to Quantum Gravity. The corresponding partition function is obtained semiclassically, ultimately requiring only the on-shell Einstein-Hilbert action with opportune asymptotic subtractions. We elaborate on the fact that the same expressions for the thermodynamical quantities can be obtained within teleparallel equivalent theories, based on either torsion or nonmetricity, by employing quasilocal relations. Notably, the bulk integrals of these theories do not vanish on-shell but rather result in boundary terms themselves. Asymptotic subtractions of the latter are able to cancel out the divergences, ultimately leading to Bekenstein-Gibbons-Hawking's results. As a non-trivial cross-check, we compute the bulk integrals directly without reference to the boundary terms. While the result agrees with the previous method for the torsion-based teleparallel theory, it differs for the nonmetricity theory. Specifically, upon regularizing the bulk integral using a fiducial reference frame, we find that the semiclassical partition function vanishes. To address this problem, we propose a simple prescription for Schwarzschild black holes, which involves keeping the nonmetric connection arbitrary and imposing thermal equilibrium. Generalizations of the results to more general modified gravity theories with antisymmetric degrees of freedom are also discussed.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Constraining the UV with the electroweak effective action

By considering an arbitrary bare action describing BSM physics, we use the Barvinsky-Vilkovisky resummation to obtain the most general non-local electroweak effective action at second order in the field strength. We also include the contribution of the functional measure to the effective action, which is found to modify the Higgs potential by shifting its vacuum value. The resulting effective action provides one-loop corrections to the $W$ and $Z$ boson masses, ultimately leading to the most general expression for the $ρ$ parameter at one-loop. The functional measure plays a pivotal role as it allows the parameterization of $ρ$ in inverse powers of the scale of new physics, while containing non-local form factors. The comparison of $ρ$ with the latest data leads to several constraints on the UV particle spectra of BSM models.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Massive graviton from diffeomorphism invariance

We describe a mechanism in which the graviton acquires a mass from the functional measure without violating the diffeomorphism symmetry nor including Stückelberg fields. Since gauge invariance is not violated, the number of degrees of freedom goes as in general relativity. For the same reason, Boulware-Deser ghosts and the vDVZ disconinuity do not show up. The graviton thus becomes massive at the quantum level while avoiding the usual issues of massive gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Transport coefficients in AdS/CFT and quantum gravity corrections due to a functional measure

The presence of a functional measure is scrutinized on both sides of the dual gauge/gravity correspondence. Corrections to the transport coefficients in relativistic hydrodynamics are obtained using the linear response procedure. In particular, using first-order hydrodynamics, the shear viscosity, entropy density, diffusion constant, and speed of sound are shown not to acquire any corrections from the functional measure of gravity, for a Minkowski background metric. On the other hand, the energy density, the pressure, the relaxation time, the bulk viscosity, the decay rate of sound waves, and coefficients of conformal traceless tensor fields, are shown to carry significant quantum corrections due to the functional measure, even for a flat background. They all acquire an imaginary part that reflects the instability of the strongly-coupled fluids on the boundary CFT. This opens up the possibility of testing quantum gravity with the quark-gluon plasma.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Background independence and field redefinitions in quantum gravity

It is generally believed that a full-fledged theory of quantum gravity should exhibit background independence and diffeomorphism invariance. In its most general form, the latter comprises field redefinitions, which are diffeomorphisms in configuration space. We show that any path-integral approach to quantum gravity leads to a tension between these properties, such that they cannot hold simultaneously.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Binary mergers in bootstrapped Newtonian gravity: mass gap and black hole area law

We study binary mergers in bootstrapped Newtonian gravity, where higher-order couplings are added to the non-relativistic Lagrangian for the Newtonian potential. In this theory, the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) mass differs from both the proper mass of Newtonian gravity and the proper mass of general relativity, which affects the interpretation of astrophysical and cosmological events. The aforementioned difference particularly provides important phenomenological constraints for the mass of the emitted matter and the compactness of the final object after the merger. The interpretation of the GW150914 signal in this theory also shows that LIGO's findings do not violate the mass gap, contrary to usual claims. We indeed find that typical stellar black hole masses can fit LIGO's data for a considerable range of compactness values. We calculate the black hole entropy in this context, which leads to a generalised black hole area law. Non-linear effects are found to effectively change only the gravitational strength via the renormalization of Newton's constant in this case.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Approximating compact objects in bootstrapped Newtonian gravity: use of the canonical potential

We consider compact objects in a classical and non-relativistic generalisation of Newtonian gravity, dubbed bootstrapped Newtonian theory, which includes higher-order derivative interaction terms of the kind generically present in the strong-field regime of gravity. By means of a field redefinition, the original bootstrapped Newtonian action is written in a canonical Newtonian form with non-linear source terms. Exact analytic solutions remain unattainable, but we show that perturbative solutions of the canonical theory can be efficiently used to derive approximate descriptions of compact objects. In particular, using the canonical potential, we can more directly and generally show that the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass differs from the (Newtonian) proper mass due to the non-linear couplings in the theory. A few examples of sources with different density profiles are explicitly reanalysed in this framework.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Covariant singularities: a brief review

The Hawking-Penrose theorem is not covariant under field redefinitions. Should the invariance under such transformations be a true principle in Nature, spacetime singularities become dubious objects. We here review the concept of covariant singularities, that is, singularities that are invariant under both spacetime diffeomorphisms and field redefinitions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Quantum fields in teleparallel gravity: renormalization at one-loop

We consider the quantization of matter fields in a background described by the teleparallel equivalent to general relativity. The presence of local Lorentz and gauge symmetries gives rise to different coupling prescriptions, which we analyse separately. As expected, quantum matter fields produce divergences that cannot be absorbed by terms in the background action of teleparallel equivalent to general relativity. Nonetheless, the formulation of teleparallel gravity allows one to find out the source of the problem. By imposing local Lorentz invariance after quantization, we show that a modified teleparallel gravity, in which the coefficients in the action are replaced by free parameters, can be renormalized at one-loop order without introducing higher-order terms. This precludes the appearance of ghosts in the theory.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Absence of covariant singularities in pure gravity

The assumptions of the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorem are not covariant under field redefinitions. Thus we propose to study singularities in field space, where the spacetime metric is treated as a coordinate along with any other fields. We show that the field-space Kretschmann scalar for a certain choice of the DeWitt field-space metric is everywhere finite. This fact could be interpreted as an indication that no singularities actually exist in pure gravity for any gravitational action. In particular, all vacuum singularities of General Relativity result from an unhappy choice of field variables. The extension to the case in which matter fields are present, as required by singularity theorems, is left for future development.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Covariant singularities in Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Gravity

It is rather well-known that spacetime singularities are not covariant under field redefinitions. A manifestly covariant approach to singularities in classical gravity was proposed in arXiv:2008.09387. In this paper, we start to extend this analysis to the quantum realm. We identify two types of covariant singularities in field space corresponding to geodesic incompleteness and ill-defined path integrals (hereby dubbed functional singularities). We argue that the former might not be harmful after all, whilst the latter makes all observables undefined. We show that the path-integral measure is regular in any four-dimensional theory of gravity without matter or in any theory in which gravity is either absent or treated semi-classically. This might suggest the absence of functional singularities in these cases, however it can only be confirmed with a thorough analysis, case by case, of the path integral. We provide a topological and model-independent classification of functional singularities using homotopy groups and we discuss examples of theories with and without such singularities.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Effective metric outside bootstrapped Newtonian sources

We determine the complete space-time metric from the bootstrapped Newtonian potential generated by a static spherically symmetric source in the surrounding vacuum. This metric contains post-Newtonian parameters which can be further used to constrain the complete underlying dynamical theory. For values of the post-Newtonian parameters within experimental bounds, the reconstructed metric appears very close to the Schwarzschild solution of General Relativity in the whole region outside the event horizon. The latter is however larger in size for the same value of the mass compared to the Schwarzschild case.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

One-loop corrections to $η/s$ in AdS$_4$/CFT$_3$

We study quantum corrections at one-loop order to the shear viscosity to entropy ratio by implementing the Vilkovisky-Barvinsky effective action in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter spacetimes. The shear viscosity is shown to receive no corrections at this order, but the entropy acquires a logarithmic correction. The coefficient of this logarithm turns out to depend on the spin of the particles running in the loop and it can be either positive or negative. On the basis of this result, we argue that the Kovtun-Son-Starinets bound cannot be seen as a fundamental property of nature beyond the classical regime.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Exorcising ghosts in quantum gravity

We remark that Ostrogradsky ghosts in higher-derivative gravity, with a finite number of derivatives, are fictitious as they result from an unjustified truncation performed in a complete theory containing infinitely many curvature invariants. The apparent ghosts can then be projected out of the quadratic gravity spectrum by redefining the boundary conditions of the theory in terms of an integration contour that does not enclose the ghost poles. This procedure does not alter the renormalizability of the theory. One can thus use quadratic gravity as a quantum field theory of gravity that is both renormalizable and unitary.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Revisiting the minimum length in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism

The existence of a minimum length in quantum gravity is investigated by computing the in-in expectation value of the proper distance in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. No minimum geometrical length is found for arbitrary gravitational theories to all orders in perturbation theory. Using non-perturbative techniques, we also show that neither the conformal sector of general relativity nor higher-derivative gravity features a minimum length. A minimum length scale, on the other hand, seems to always be present when one considers in-out amplitudes, from which one could extract the energy scale of scattering processes.

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