OpenAI researchers have published a new preprint revealing that single-minus graviton amplitudes, long assumed to vanish, can in fact exist under specific kinematic conditions. The study extends previous findings on gluon interactions to the gravitational domain, demonstrating that these amplitudes are nonzero when particle momenta satisfy the half-collinear regime. The work challenges standard textbook assumptions about tree-level graviton interactions.

Authored by researchers from OpenAI, Harvard, and other institutions, the paper shows these amplitudes follow from symmetry principles and recursion relations. The team found that when one particle has negative helicity while others have positive helicity, the interactions don't disappear but exist as well-defined mathematical distributions. This discovery builds on Roger Penrose's half-century-old work on infinite-dimensional symmetries in gravity.

The research employed GPT-5.2 Pro to derive the gravitational extension after providing it with the earlier gluon results. The AI not only solved the problem using the directed matrix-tree theorem but also produced an initial draft. This project highlights how AI can accelerate theoretical physics research, with verification and exposition now representing the dominant share of effort rather than initial discovery.