Super-renormalizable and finite gravitational theories

• Main Authors: Leonardo Modesto, Lesław Rachwał
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014-12-01
• Series: Nuclear Physics B
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0550321314003137

We hereby introduce and extensively study a class of non-polynomial higher derivative theories of gravity that realize a ultraviolet (UV) completion of Einstein general relativity. These theories are unitary (ghost free) and at most only one-loop divergences survive. The outcome is a class of theories super-renormalizable in even dimension and finite in odd dimension. Moreover, we explicitly prove in D=4 that there exists an extension of the theory that is completely finite and all the beta functions vanish even at one-loop. These results can be easily extended in extra dimensions and it is likely that the higher dimensional theory can be made finite, too. Therefore we have the possibility for “finite quantum gravity” in any dimension.