Quantum field theory is extended to include purely virtual “cloud sectors”, which allow us to define point-dependent observables, including a gauge invariant metric and gauge invariant matter fields, and calculate their off-shell correlation functions perturbatively in quantum gravity. Each extra sector is made of a cloud field, its anticommuting partner, a cloud function and a cloud Faddeev-Popov determinant. Thanks to certain cloud symmetries, the ordinary correlation functions and S matrix elements are unmodified. The clouds are rendered purely virtual, to ensure that they do not propagate unwanted degrees of freedom. So doing, the off-shell, diagrammatic version of the optical theorem holds and the extended theory is unitary. Every insertion in a correlation function can be dressed with its own cloud. The one-loop two-point functions of dressed scalars, vectors and gravitons are calculated. Their absorptive parts are positive, cloud independent and gauge independent, while they are unphysical if non purely virtual clouds are used. Renormalizability is proved to all orders by means of an extended Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism and its Zinn-Justin master equations. The purely virtual approach is compared to other approaches available in the literature.
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