On the Possibility of Super-luminal Propagation in a Gravitational Background

Abstract

We argue that superluminal propagation in a gravitational field discovered by Drummond and Hathrell in the lowest order of perturbation theory remains intact in higher orders. The criticism of this result based on an exact calculation of the one loop correction to the photon polarization operator in the Penrose plane wave approximation is not tenable. The statement that quantum causality is automatically imposed by classical causality is possibly invalid due to the infrared nature of the same triangle diagram which also contributes to the quantum trace anomaly.