Electric shocks: bounding Einstein-Maxwell theory with time delays on boosted RN backgrounds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A bstract The requirement that particles propagate causally on non-trivial backgrounds implies interesting constraints on higher-derivative operators. This work is part of a systematic study of the positivity bounds derivable from time delays on shockwave backgrounds. First, we discuss shockwaves in field theory, which are infinitely boosted Coulomb-like field configurations. We show how a positive time delay implies positivity of four-derivative operators in scalar field theory and electromagnetism, consistent with the results derived using dispersion relations, and we comment on how additional higher-derivative operators could be included. We then turn to gravitational shockwave backgrounds. We compute the infinite boost limit of Reissner-Nordström black holes to derive charged shockwave backgrounds. We consider photons traveling on these backgrounds and interacting through four-derivative corrections to Einstein-Maxwell theory. The inclusion of gravity introduces a logarithmic term into the time delay that interferes with the straightforward bounds derivable in pure field theory, a fact consistent with CEMZ and with recent results from dispersion relations. We discuss two ways to extract a physically meaningful quantity from the logarithmic time delay — by introducing an IR cutoff, or by considering the derivative of the time delay — and comment on the bounds implied in each case. Finally, we review a number of additional shockwave backgrounds which might be of use in future applications, including spinning shockwaves, those in higher dimensions or with a cosmological constant, and shockwaves from boosted extended objects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".