English

Constructing conformally invariant equations by using Weyl geometry

High Energy Physics - Theory 2013-05-06 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We present a simple, systematic and practical method to construct conformally invariant equations in arbitrary Riemann spaces. This method that we call "Weyl-to-Riemann" is based on two features of Weyl geometry. i) A Weyl space is defined by the metric tensor and the Weyl vector WW, it becomes equivalent to a Riemann space when WW is gradient. ii) Any homogeneous differential equation written in a Weyl space by means of the Weyl connection is conformally invariant. The Weyl-to-Riemann method selects those equations whose conformal invariance is preserved when reducing to a Riemann space. Applications to scalar, vector and spin-2 fields are presented, which demonstrates the efficiency of the present method. In particular, a new conformally invariant spin-2 field equation is exhibited. This equation extends Grishchuk-Yudin's equation and fixes its limitations since it does not require the Lorenz gauge. Moreover this equation reduces to the Drew-Gegenberg and Deser-Nepomechie equations in respectively Minkowski and de Sitter spaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.2599,
  title  = {Constructing conformally invariant equations by using Weyl geometry},
  author = {Sofiane Faci},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.2599},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

13 pages, no figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:52:44.074Z