English

Stability of Massive Cosmological Gravitons

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We analyze the physics of massive spin 2 fields in (A)dS backgrounds and exhibit that: The theory is stable only for masses m^2 >= 2\Lambda/3, where the conserved energy associated with the background timelike Killing vector is positive, while the instability for m^2<2\Lambda/3 is traceable to the helicity 0 energy. The stable, unitary, partially massless theory at m^2=2\Lambda/3 describes 4 propagating degrees of freedom, corresponding to helicities (+/-2,+/-1) but contains no 0 helicity excitation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0103255,
  title  = {Stability of Massive Cosmological Gravitons},
  author = {S. Deser and A. Waldron},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0103255},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

13 pages, LaTeX, version to appear in Phys. Lett. B

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:03:14.602Z