Self-dual gravity in de Sitter space: Light-cone ansatz and static-patch scattering

Using Krasnov's formulation of general relativity, we develop a light cone ansatz for self-dual gravity (along with linearized anti-self-dual perturbations) in the Poincare patch of de Sitter space. This amounts to a generalization of Plebanski's "first heavenly equation" to nonzero cosmological constant. The only interaction vertices are cubic ones, found previously by Metsaev in a bottom-up light cone approach. We point out a special feature of these vertices, which leads to "almost conservation" of energy at each successive order in perturbation theory, despite the time-dependent de Sitter background. Since we embed the light cone variables into a full spacetime metric, the solutions have a clear geometric interpretation. In particular, this allows us to read off boundary data on both the past and future horizons of a causal (static) patch. In this way, we add self-dual general relativity to the program of defining and computing scattering amplitudes in a causal patch of de Sitter space.