Related papers: Variations on an aethereal theme
The problem of observables in classical and quantum gravity is a long-standing one. It is sometimes argued that observable quantities should be diffeomorphsm invariant, following the philosophy of Dirac. We argue that diffeomorphism…
Horava gravity breaks Lorentz symmetry by introducing a dynamical timelike scalar field (the khronon), which can be used as a preferred time coordinate (thus selecting a preferred space-time foliation). Adopting the khronon as the time…
We construct a class of Einstein-vector theories where the vector field couples bilinearly to the curvature polynomials of arbitrary order in such a way that only Riemann tensor rather than its derivative enters the equations of motion. The…
Theories that spontaneously break Lorentz invariance also violate diffeomorphism symmetries, implying the existence of extra degrees of freedom and modifications of gravity. In the minimal model (``ghost condensation'') with only a single…
Spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz symmetry occurs when a local vector or tensor field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value. The effects of such breaking are examined in the context of gravity theory. These include an associated…
Assuming the existence of a preferred aether frame and the anisotropy of the one-way speed of light in platforms different from the aether frame, we derive the space and time transformations relative to bodies moving in any direction of…
We present a covariant study of static space-times, as such and as solutions of gravity theories. By expressing the relevant tensors through the velocity and the acceleration vectors that characterise static space-times, the field equations…
We study the possibility to constrain deviations from Lorentz invariance in dark matter (DM) with cosmological observations. Breaking of Lorentz invariance generically introduces new light gravitational degrees of freedom, which we…
Recently it has been explicitly shown how a theory with global $GL(d,\mathbb{R})$ coordinate (affine) invariance which is spontaneously broken down to its Lorentz subgroup will have as its Goldstone fields enough degrees of freedom to…
The field equations in modified gravity theories possess an important decoupling property with respect to certain classes of nonholonomic frames. This allows us to construct generic off--diagonal solutions depending on all spacetime…
Ho\v{r}ava gravity is a attempt to construct a renormalizable theory of gravity by breaking the Lorentz Invariance of the gravitational action at high energies. The underlying principle is that Lorentz Invariance is an approximate symmetry…
Many non-relativistic Quantum Field Theories with conserved particle number share a common set of symmetries: time dependent spatial diffeomorphisms acting on the background metric and U(1) invariance acting on the background fields which…
A definition of gravitational energy is proposed for any theory described by a diffeomorphism-invariant Lagrangian. The mathematical structure is a Noether- current construction of Wald involving the boundary term in the action, but here it…
Emergent modified gravity presents a new set of generally covariant gravitational theories in which the space-time metric is not directly given by one of the fundamental fields. A metric compatible with the modified dynamics of gravity is…
Lorentz invariance is a fundamental symmetry of both Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum field theory. However, deviations from Lorentz invariance at energies approaching the Planck scale are predicted in many quantum…
Eigenvectors of stress-energy tensor (the source in Einstein's equations) form privileged bases in description of the corresponding space-times. When one or more of these vector fields are rotating (the property well determined in…
Diffeomorphism covariant theories with dynamical background metric, like gravity coupled to matter fields in the way expressed by Einstein-Hilbert's action or relativistic strings described by Polyakov's action, have `on-shell' vanishing…
From a cosmological perspective, scalar fields are well-motivated dark matter and dark energy candidates. Several possibilities of neutrino couplings with a time-varying cosmic field have been investigated in the literature. In this work,…
Effective field theories (EFTs) have been widely used as a framework in order to place constraints on the Planck suppressed Lorentz violations predicted by various models of quantum gravity. There are however technical problems in the EFT…
Our conventional system of physical units is based on local or microscopic {\it dimensional} quantities which are {\it defined}, for convenience or otherwise aesthetic reasons, to be spacetime-independent. A more general choice of units may…