English

The particle spectrum of parity-violating Poincar\'e gravitational theory

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-02-19 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the physical spectrum of the gravitational theory based on the Poincar\'e group with terms which are at most quadratic in tetrad and spin connection, allowing for the presence of parity-even as well as parity-odd invariants. We determine restrictions on the parameters of the action so that all degrees of freedom propagate and are neither ghosts nor tachyons. We show that the addition of parity non-conserving invariants extends the healthy parameter space of the theory. To accomplish our goal, we apply the weak field approximation around flat spacetime and in order to facilitate the analysis, we separate the bilinear action for the excitations into completely independent spin sectors. For this purpose, we employ the spin-projection operator formalism and extend the original basis built previously, to be able to handle the parity-odd pieces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1411.5613,
  title  = {The particle spectrum of parity-violating Poincar\'e gravitational theory},
  author = {Georgios K. Karananas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.5613},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

v3: erratum discussing contradiction in ghost-free conditions appended