Gravity in twistor space and its Grassmannian formulation

Abstract

We prove the formula for the complete tree-level S-matrix of N=8 supergravity recently conjectured by two of the authors. The proof proceeds by showing that the new formula satisfies the same BCFW recursion relations that physical amplitudes are known to satisfy, with the same initial conditions. As part of the proof, the behavior of the new formula under large BCFW deformations is studied. An unexpected bonus of the analysis is a very straightforward proof of the enigmatic 1/z2 behavior of gravity. In addition, we provide a description of gravity amplitudes as a multidimensional contour integral over a Grassmannian. The Grassmannian formulation has a very simple structure; in the Nk-2MHV sector the integrand is essentially the product of that of an MHV and an MHV amplitude, with k+1 and n-k-1 particles respectively.