The effective field theory of the gravitational functional measure

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Knopki, Henrique, Kuntz, Iberê
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Knopki, Henrique
Kuntz, Iberê
author_facet Knopki, Henrique
Kuntz, Iberê
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_15466
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The effective field theory of the gravitational functional measure
Knopki, Henrique
Kuntz, Iberê
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
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.
title The effective field theory of the gravitational functional measure
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15466