The background information about perturbative quantum gravity

Abstract

The purpose of this Chapter is to give a general introduction and status review on the perturbative approach to quantum gravity (QG). This text is a modified version of the corresponding chapters of Part II of the recent textbook on quantum field theory (QFT) and QG, co-authored with I.L. Buchbinder and published in Oxford University Press. We discuss the choice of the starting action in the QG models, degrees of freedom and propagator of metric perturbations, power counting and renormalizability of these models, the problems related to higher derivative theories and ghosts, such as quantum unitarity and the stability of classical solutions in general relativity; and the perspective to overcome these problems. The gauge fixing and parametrization dependencies are discussed in detail using the corresponding general QFT theorems developed in gauge theories. On top of that, we present a basic example of deriving the one-loop divergences and discuss an important example of the renormalization group in QG. The gauge invariant renormalizability of QG is considered in another Chapter of the Handbook, written together with P.M. Lavrov.