Cubic Gravity Formalism of Static Point Particle 65 views

This thesis studies the cubic formulation of Einstein gravity as a simplified framework for perturbative gravitational calculations. In the standard perturbative expansion of the Einstein–Hilbert action, graviton self-interactions appear at arbitrarily high order, making tree-level diagrammatic calculations increasingly complicated. Cubic gravity reformulates ordinary general relativity by introducing an auxiliary field , allowing the gravitational action to be written using only cubic interactions. The thesis derives the auxiliary-field representation, shows its relation to the Christoffel connection and the Palatini formalism, and applies the resulting Feynman rules to static point-particle sources. It then analyzes graviton and auxiliary-field propagators, cubic interaction vertices, and the ansatz for off-shell graviton and auxiliary-field currents in arbitrary spacetime dimension. As an explicit check of the formalism, the first-order and second-order off-shell graviton emissions are reproduced from tree diagrams, yielding form factors consistent with known cubic-gravity results. The thesis concludes by outlining the recursive structure enabled by the absence of higher-point vertices and discussing possible extensions to rotating sources and electromagnetic matter interactions.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Cubic Gravity; Graviton Emission

English

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2026-05-11