English

Classical Weyl Transverse Gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-05-24 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study various classical aspects of the Weyl transverse (WTDiff) gravity in a general space-time dimension. First of all, we clarify a classical equivalence among three kinds of gravitational theories, those are, the conformally-invariant scalar tensor gravity, Einstein's general relativity and the WTDiff gravity via the gauge fixing procedure. Secondly, we show that in the WTDiff gravity the cosmological constant is a mere integration constant as in unimodular gravity, but it does not receive any radiative corrections unlike the unimodular gravity. A key point in this proof is to construct a covariantly conserved energy-momentum tensor, which is achieved on the basis of this equivalence relation. Thirdly, we demonstrate that the Noether current for the Weyl transformation is identically vanishing, thereby implying that the Weyl symmetry existing in both the conformally-invariant scalar tensor gravity and the WTDiff gravity is a "fake" symmetry. We find it possible to extend this proof to all matter fields, i.e. the Weyl invariant scalar, vector and spinor fields. Fourthly, it is explicitly shown that in the WTDiff gravity the Schwarzshild black hole metric and a charged black hole one are classical solutions to the equations of motion only when they are expressed in the Cartesian coordinate system. Finally, we consider the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology and provide some exact solutions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.05441,
  title  = {Classical Weyl Transverse Gravity},
  author = {Ichiro Oda},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05441},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Dedicated to the memory of Mario Tonin, 39 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:23:46.114Z