New Variables For Graviton Scattering Amplitudes

Abstract

Motivated by the success of Hodges' momentum twistor variables in planar Yang-Mills, in this note we introduce a set of new variables, the S variables, which are tailored for gravity (or more generally for theories without color ordering). The S variables trivialize all on-shell constraints on kinematic data and momentum conservation while keeping permutation invariance. We explicitly show the relation between the S variables and the spinor-helicity variables as well as the connection to momentum twistors. The S variables can be nicely understood using the geometry of Grassmannians and are determined by a 2-plane and a 4-plane in C^n, with n the number of the particles. As an illustration of their utility, we use the S variables to present a reference-free form of soft factors and tree level MHV amplitudes of gravity which is obtained by using the recent formula given by Hodges.