Related papers: Massive Gravity: Exorcising the Ghost
Canonical analysis of a recently proposed [1] linear+quadratic curvature gravity model in D=3 displays its pure fourth derivative quadratic branch as a ghost-free (massless) excitation. Hence it both negates an old no-go theorem and is…
Linearized four-derivative gravity with a general gauge fixing term is considered. By a Legendre transform and a suitable diagonalization procedure it is cast into a second-order equivalent form where the nature of the physical degrees of…
We introduce the Vainshtein mechanism which plays a crucial role in massive gravities, as well as in related theories such as Galileons and their extensions. This mechanism, also known as k-mouflage, allows to hide via non linear effects -…
We review some of the recent results which can be useful for better understanding of the problem of stability of vacuum and in general classical solutions in higher derivative quantum gravity. The fourth derivative terms in the purely…
In gravitational Higgs mechanism graviton components acquire mass via spontaneous diffeomorphism breaking by scalar vacuum expectation values. We point out that in the massless limit the resulting theory is not Einstein-Hilbert gravity…
This paper presents a new higher derivative gravity which in spontaneous breaking electroweak symmetry state does not have ghost in gravity sector. We show that Newton constant of the gravity and dark energy density they depend on the…
It has long been understood that certain theories of ghost free massive gravity and their multi-graviton extensions can be thought of as arising from a higher dimensional theory of gravity, upon discretising the extra dimension. However,…
Special gravity refers to interacting theories of massless gravitons in Minkowski space-time which are invariant under the abelian gauge invariance $h_{ab}\rightarrow h_{ab}+\partial_{(a}\chi_{b)}$ only. In this article we determine the…
Understanding the role of higher derivatives is probably one of the most relevant questions in quantum gravity theory. Already at the semiclassical level, when gravity is a classical background for quantum matter fields, the action of…
The study of linear perturbation theory for general functions of the Ricci and Gauss-Bonnet scalars is done over an empty anisotropic universe, i.e. the Kasner-type background, in order to show that an anisotropic background in general has…
It was proposed that if a higher-derivative gravity is renormalizable, it implies necessarily a finite Newtonian potential at the origin, but the reverse of this statement is not true. Here we show that the reverse is true when taking into…
In de Sitter spacetime there exists an absolute minimum for the mass of a spin-2 field set by the Higuchi bound m^2 \geq 2H^2. We generalize this bound to arbitrary spatially flat FRW geometries in the context of the recently proposed…
The theory of gravity with an auxiliary extra dimension is known to give the ghost-free cubic completion of the Fierz-Pauli mass term in the decoupling limit. Our work generalizes the boundary condition in the auxiliary dimension that…
Motivated by the apparent dependence of string $\sigma$--models on the sum of spacetime metric and antisymmetric tensor fields, we reconsider gravity theories constructed from a nonsymmetric metric. We first show that all such "geometrical"…
In the context of perturbative quantum field theory, the addition of quadratic-curvature invariants to the Einstein-Hilbert action makes it possible to achieve strict renormalizability in four dimensions. The additional terms $R^2$ and…
In this paper we establish the correspondence between ghost-free bimetric theory and a class of higher derivative gravity actions, including conformal gravity and New Massive Gravity. We also characterize the relation between the respective…
Just like the vector gauge bosons in the gauge theories, it is now known that gravitons acquire mass in the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking of diffeomorphisms through the condensation of scalar fields. The point is that we should…
We disprove the widespread belief that higher order curvature theories of gravity in the metric-affine formalism are generally ghost-free. This is clarified by considering a sub-class of theories constructed only with the Ricci tensor and…
The intrinsic presence of ghosts in the symmetric teleparallel framework is elucidated. We illustrate our general arguments in $f(\mathbb{Q})$ theories by studying perturbations in the three inequivalent spatially flat cosmologies. Two of…
We study Galileon theories that emerge in ghost-free massive gravity. In particular, we focus on a sub-class of these theories where the Galileons can be completely decoupled from the tensor Lagrangian. These Galileons differ from generic…