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I don't quite understand why 2-loop pure graviton scattering is divergent. It looks UV finite to me when I naively compute the superficial divergence $$D=dL-2I\tag{1}$$ for $d=4, L=2, I=5$.

Consider the 1PI diagram built from 3-vertices below, we have $D=-2$

enter image description here

and the integral would look something like

$$\begin{equation} \int\frac{(d^4k)}{(2\pi)^4}\int\frac{(d^4l)}{(2\pi)^4}(-ig)^4\frac{i\mathcal{P}_{\mu\nu,\alpha\beta}}{k^2+i\epsilon}\frac{i\mathcal{P}_{\dots}}{l^2+i\epsilon}\frac{i\mathcal{P}_{\dots}}{(P_{in}-k)^2+i\epsilon}\frac{i\mathcal{P}_{\dots}}{(P_{out}-l)^2+i\epsilon}\frac{i\mathcal{P}_{\dots}}{(k-l)^2+i\epsilon}(2\pi)^4\delta^4(P_{in}-P_{out})\propto\int\frac{k^8}{k^{10}}=\Lambda^{-2} \end{equation}\tag{2}$$

where I am suppressing the indices structure with "$\dots$" for simplicity of typing the integral.

which is looks UV finite.

Am doing something wrong with my calculation? Where exactly do the UV divergences come from?

Qmechanic
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1 Answers1

6

Well, in perturbative gravity, each interactions term contains 2 derivatives$^1$, so the Feynman rule for a vertex has 2 momentum factors in the numerator that raise the superficial degree of divergence $D$, i.e. OP's eq. (1) is modified.


$^1$ See e.g. eq. (4) in my Phys.SE answer here.

Qmechanic
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