English

Graviton propagation in ghost-free massive gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-04-27 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We consider the ghost-free dRGT massive gravity with two of its three possible mass terms. This theory has five gravitational degrees of freedom. On Minkowski spacetime these modes have helicity-2, -1 and -0 and propagate on the Minkowski lightcone in the high-frequency limit. However for a general background the degrees of freedom corresponding to the helicity-1 and -0 modes have characteristics different to that of the metric lightcone. Here we prove in all generality, that the two degrees of freedom corresponding to the helicity-2 mode always propagate on the metric lightcone for any background in the high-frequency limit, which has significant relevance for current and future observational tests of the theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.22418,
  title  = {Graviton propagation in ghost-free massive gravity},
  author = {Claudia de Rham and Jan Kożuszek and Andrew J. Tolley and Toby Wiseman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.22418},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:33:38.930Z