Related papers: On Consistent Theories of Massive Spin-2 Fields Co…
The coupling problem of higher spin fields with a non dynamical background is revisited, focussing our attention in 2+1 dimensional space-time. Starting with a suitable Lagrangian field formulation, we study causality and the conservation…
The existence of a ghost free theory of massive gravity begs for an interpretation as a Higgs phase of General Relativity. We revisit the study of massive gravity as a Higgs phase. Absent a compelling microphysical model of spontaneous…
We study ghosts in multimetric gravity by combining the mini-superspace and the Hamiltonian constraint analysis. We first revisit bimetric gravity and explain why it is ghost-free. Then, we apply our method to trimetric gravity and clarify…
In this PhD thesis we deal with several theoretical and phenomenological apsects of metric-affine theories of gravity. Concretely, we first give a broad introduction to the necessary tools to understand the framework and elaborate on some…
We consider massive higher-spin multiplets coupled to quantum gravity and compute their contributions to the gravitational beta functions at one loop. Such theories, if quantized with the Feynman prescription, would contain ghosts. Instead,…
A unified description of all interactions could be based on a higher-dimensional theory involving only spinor fields. The metric arises as a composite object and the gravitational field equations contain torsion-corrections as compared to…
We consider a model where the interaction between dark matter and the Standard Model particles are mediated by a ghost-free bi-gravity portal. The bi-gravity model invokes a massive spin-2 particle coupled to the usual massless graviton as…
We show that, in the weak field limit, at large separations, in sharp contrast to General Relativity (GR), all massive gravity theories predict distance-dependent spin alignments for spinning objects. For all separations GR requires…
We examine the generic theory of a partially massless (PM) spin-two field interacting with gravity in four dimensions from a bottom-up perspective. By analyzing the most general form of the Lagrangian, we first show that if such a theory…
In this paper, we investigate three important issues: stability, ghost and strong coupling, in the Horava-Melby-Thompson setup of the Horava-Lifshitz theory with $\lambda \not= 1$, generalized recently by da Silva. We first develop the…
We introduce a technique for restoring general coordinate invariance into theories where it is explicitly broken. This is the analog for gravity of the Callan-Coleman-Wess-Zumino formalism for gauge theories. We use this to elucidate the…
We explore the possibility of parity-violating, nonminimally coupled 2-form field theories that retain the same dynamical degrees of freedom as a massive 2-form and thus are ghost-free. Starting from the most general kinetic terms and…
We consider a theory of scalars minimally coupled to an auxiliary background metric. The theory is generally covariant and subject to the constraint of vanishing energy-momentum tensor. Eliminating the auxiliary metric leads to a…
Ghost-free dRGT massive gravity is a subtle theory, even at the classical level. Its viability depends on Vainshtein screening, which is an intrinsically non-linear phenomenon, and thus understanding the full non-linear dynamics of the…
We construct generalized symmetries for linearized Einstein gravity in arbitrary dimensions. First-principle considerations in QFT force generalized symmetries to appear in dual pairs. Verifying this prediction helps us find the full set of…
We study the problem of interacting theories with (partially)-massless and conformal higher spin fields without matter in three dimensions. A new class of theories that have partially-massless fields is found, which significantly extends…
General Relativity assumes that spacetime is fully described by the metric alone. An alternative is the so called Palatini formalism where the metric and the connections are taken as independent quantities. The metric-affine theory of…
In this essay we review the central difficulty in formulating a viable quantum field theory in which gravity is emergent at low energies, rather than mediated by a fundamental gauge field. The Weinberg-Witten theorem forbids spin 2 massless…
In massive gravity and bigravity, spin-2 interactions are defined in terms of a square root matrix that involves two metrics. In this work, the interactions are constructed using a congruence matrix between the metrics. It is established…
We perform the Hamiltonian analysis of the bimetric theory of gravity introduced in [arXiv:1109.3515 [hep-th]]. We carefully analyze the requirement of the preservation of all constraints and we find that there is no additional constraint…