Self-dual gravity in de Sitter space: lightcone ansatz and static-patch scattering

Abstract

Using Krasnov's formulation of General Relativity (GR), we develop a lightcone ansatz for self-dual gravity (along with linearized anti-self-dual perturbations) in the Poincare patch of de Sitter space. This amounts to a generalization of Plebanski's "second heavenly equation" to non-zero cosmological constant. The only interaction vertices are cubic ones, found previously by Metsaev in a bottom-up lightcone approach. We point out a special feature of these vertices, which leads to "almost conservation" of energy at each successive order in perturbation theory, despite the time-dependent de Sitter background. Since we embed the lightcone variables into a full spacetime metric, the solutions have a clear geometric interpretation. In particular, this allows us to read off boundary data on both the past and future horizons of a causal (static) patch. In this way, we add self-dual GR to the program of defining & computing scattering amplitudes in a causal patch of de Sitter space.