A cautionary case of casual causality
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Published version
Author(s)
Chen, Calvin Y-R
de Rham, Claudia
Margalit, Aoibheann
Tolley, Andrew J
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We distinguish between the notions of asymptotic causality and infrared causality for gravitational effective field theories, and show that the latter gives constraints consistent with gravitational positivity bounds. We re-explore the scattering of gravitational waves in a spherically symmetric background in the EFT of gravity in D ≥ 5, for which the leading-order correction to Einstein gravity is determined by the Gauss-Bonnet operator. We reproduce the known result that the truncated effective theory exhibits apparent time advances relative to the background geometry for specific polarisations, which naively signal a violation of causality. We show that by properly identifying the regime of validity of the effective theory, the apparent time advance can be shown to be unresolvable. To illustrate this, we identify specific higher-dimension operators in the EFT expansion which become large for potentially resolvable time advances, rendering the EFT expansion invalid. Our results demonstrate how staying within the confines of the EFT, neither infrared nor asymptotic causality are ever violated for Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, no matter how low the scale, and furthermore its causality can be understood without appealing to a precise UV completion such as string theory.
Date Issued
2022-03-03
Date Acceptance
2022-03-03
Citation
The Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022, 25 (3), pp.1-40
ISSN
1029-8479
Publisher
SpringerOpen
Start Page
1
End Page
40
Journal / Book Title
The Journal of High Energy Physics
Volume
25
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© The Authors. Open Access . This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000764701100002&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
BLACK-HOLES
Classical Theories of Gravity
Effective Field Theories
FIELD
Field Theories in Higher Dimensions
GRAVITATIONAL PERTURBATIONS
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physics, Particles & Fields
Science & Technology
STABILITY
TERMS
TIME-DELAY
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 025
Date Publish Online
2022-02-03