• Accepted Paper

Perturbatively dressed observables

Clifford Cheung, Allic Sivaramakrishnan, Jordan Wilson-Gerow, and Lihang Zhou

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 10 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5ft9-9lrh

Abstract

A central lesson of gravity is that local observables are ill-defined. Coordinates themselves are a redundancy of description, so any particular point in spacetime is only meaningful once defined relationally by clocks, rulers, or asymptotic data. Despite extensive formal work on this subject, explicit calculations of the resulting gravitationally dressed observables are more scarce. In this paper we perturbatively compute dressed matrix elements of local operators in electrodynamics and general relativity, including both potential and radiative photons and gravitons. Our expressions indicate that dressing is not ornamental: it universally induces kinematic singularities that can substantively reshape observables. We further show how dressing is mathematically equivalent to gauge fixing, as demonstrated by a dynamical temporal gauge in which the gauge-fixing vector is itself a geodesic fluid.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation