Can we see gravitational collapse in (quantum) gravity perturbation theory?

Abstract

In this paper, by making use of the perturbative expansion around topological field theory we are trying to understand why the standard perturbation theory for General Relativity, which starts with linearized gravity does not see gravitational collapse. We start with investigating classical equations of motion. For zero Immirzi parameter the ambiguity of the standard perturbative expansion is reproduced. This ambiguity is related to the appearance of the linearized diffeomorphism symmetry, which becomes unlinked from the original diffeomorphism symmetry. Introducing Immirzi parameter makes it possible to restore the link between these two symmetries and thus removes the ambiguity, but at the cost of making classical perturbation theory rather intractable. Then we argue that the two main sources of complexity of perturbation theory, infinite number of degrees of freedom and non-trivial curvature of the phase space of General Relativity could be disentangled when studying {\it quantum} amplitudes. As an illustration we consider zero order approximation in quantum perturbation theory. We identify relevant observables, and sketch their quantization. We find some indications that this zero order approximation might be described by Doubly Special Relativity.