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}
}
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7 pages