Octahedron of complex null rays and conformal symmetry breaking

Abstract

We show how the manifold T∗SU(2,2) arises as a symplectic reduction from eight copies of the twistor space. Some of the constraints in the twistor space correspond to an octahedral configuration of 12 complex light rays in the Minkowski space. We discuss a mechanism to break the conformal symmetry down to the twistorial parametrization of T∗SL(2,C) used in loop quantum gravity.