Quantum gravity represents the frontier where the very large meets the very small, attempting to unify Einstein's theory of gravity with the strange rules of quantum mechanics. This field explores the fundamental fabric of spacetime, seeking to understand how the universe behaves at its most extreme scales, from the heart of black holes to the moment of the Big Bang. Because these concepts often involve complex mathematics, they can feel distant to non-specialists, yet they hold the key to a complete picture of physical reality.

At Gist.Science, we bridge this gap by processing every new preprint in this category directly from arXiv. Our team provides both plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries for each paper, ensuring that groundbreaking research is accessible to everyone, from curious students to seasoned researchers. Below are the latest papers in quantum gravity, offering fresh insights into the nature of our cosmos.

⚛️ phenomenology

Gravitational waves from axion inflation in the gradient expansion formalism. Part I. Pure axion inflation

Using the gradient expansion formalism, this paper presents a detailed parameter scan of gravitational wave production in pure axion inflation and finds that detectable signals require strong backreaction regimes that conflict with current constraints on dark radiation (ΔNeff\Delta N_{\rm eff}), thereby defining a critical target for future lattice studies.

Richard von Eckardstein, Kai Schmitz, Oleksandr Sobol2026-04-16
⚛️ general relativity

Persistence of post-Newtonian amplitude structure in binary black hole mergers

By analyzing 275 numerical relativity simulations, this study demonstrates that while leading-order post-Newtonian amplitude structures persist through the merger for certain modes, low-degree polynomial corrections to these post-Newtonian Ansätze are sufficient to accurately capture strong-field behavior across the inspiral, merger, and post-merger phases for efficient waveform modeling.

Viviana A. Cáceres-Barbosa2026-04-16
⚛️ high-energy theory

Unitary and Analytic Renormalisation of Cosmological Correlators

This paper resolves discrepancies in the literature regarding ultraviolet divergences in cosmological correlators by demonstrating that various renormalization schemes yield consistent, unitary results and establishing a practical framework where the imaginary part of one-loop wavefunction coefficients is universally fixed by the logarithmic running of the real part.

Diksha Jain, Enrico Pajer, Xi Tong2026-04-16
⚛️ general relativity

Rényi Law Constraints on Gauß-Bonnet Black Hole Merger

This paper investigates how Rényi entropy constraints affect the merger of equal-mass black holes in five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet Anti-de Sitter spacetime, revealing that the Gauss-Bonnet term significantly alters merger mass bounds compared to General Relativity, specifically weakening them for zeroth-order Rényi entropy and strengthening them for higher orders.

Neeraj Kumar, Ankur Srivastav, Phongpichit Channuie2026-04-16
⚛️ phenomenology

Gravitational waves from axion inflation in the gradient expansion formalism. Part II. Fermionic axion inflation

This paper extends the gradient expansion formalism to fermionic axion inflation, demonstrating that Schwinger pair creation of charged fermions damps gauge-field production and attenuates the gravitational wave signal, thereby allowing observable signals from LISA and ET to be compatible with ΔNeff\Delta N_{\rm eff} constraints while identifying a new damped oscillatory backreaction regime.

Richard von Eckardstein, Kai Schmitz, Oleksandr Sobol2026-04-16
⚛️ general relativity

On the use of the Derivative Approximation for Likelihoods for Gravitational Wave Inference

This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of gravitational wave inference methods, demonstrating that the Derivative Approximation for Likelihoods (DALI) offers a significantly more accurate and computationally efficient alternative to traditional MCMC and Fisher Matrix approaches, while introducing the public \texttt{GWDALI} code to facilitate rapid and precise posterior estimation for next-generation observatories.

Josiel Mendonça Soares de Souza, Miguel Quartin2026-04-16
⚛️ high-energy theory

Every Wrinkle Carries A Memory: An Integro-differential Bootstrap for Features in Cosmological Correlators

This paper extends the cosmological bootstrap program to scale-breaking scenarios by deriving integro-differential boundary equations with memory kernels for heavy fields with time-dependent masses, enabling analytical and numerical solutions that reveal exponentially enhanced primordial features in the squeezed bispectrum.

Sadra Jazayeri, Xi Tong, Yuhang Zhu2026-04-16