Related papers: Positivity Constraints for Pseudo-linear Massive S…
A discussion of the number of degrees of freedom, and their dynamical properties, in higher derivative gravitational theories is presented. The complete non-linear sigma model for these degrees of freedom is exhibited using the method of…
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…
The objective of this thesis is to present a viable extension of general relativity free from cosmological singularities. A viable cosmology, in this sense, is one that is free from ghosts, tachyons or exotic matter, while staying true to…
The effective action for gravity at high curvatures is likely to contain higher derivative terms. These corrections may have profound consequences for the singularity structure of space-time and for early Universe cosmology. In this…
We perform the Hamiltonian analysis of non-linear massive gravity action studied recently in arXiv:1106.3344 [hep-th]. We show that the Hamiltonian constraint is the second class constraint. As a result the theory possesses an odd number of…
Causality constrains the gravitational interactions of massive higher spin particles in both AdS and flat spacetime. We explore the extent to which these constraints apply to composite particles, explaining why they do not rule out…
It is well known that a strictly massless spin-$3/2$ particle can interact consistently only within supergravity. Recently, positivity arguments have shown that an effective field theory of a massive Majorana spin-$3/2$ particle admits a…
We generalize the Galileon duality to any single scalar field Lagrangian coupled locally to any matter field. Under the duality, a generalized Galileon maps into another generalized Galileon via a one parameter group of transformations,…
The 2-parameter family of massive variants of Einstein's gravity (on a Minkowski background) found by Ogievetsky and Polubarinov by excluding lower spins can also be derived using universal coupling. A Dirac-Bergmann constrained dynamics…
We derive the decoupling limit of Massive Gravity on de Sitter in an arbitrary number of space-time dimensions d. By embedding d-dimensional de Sitter into d+1-dimensional Minkowski, we extract the physical helicity-1 and helicity-0…
In this PhD thesis, we investigate a wide class of three-dimensional massive gravity models and show how most of them (if not all) can be brought in a first-order, Chern-Simons-like, formulation. This allows for a general analysis of the…
We identify an unusual new gauge-gravity relation: the one-loop effective action for a massive spinor in 2n dimensional AdS space is expressed in terms of precisely the same function [a certain multiple gamma function] as the one-loop…
If it is hypothesised that there is no dark matter then some alternative gravitational theory must take the place of general relativity (GR) on the largest scales. Dynamical measurements can be used to investigate the nature of such a…
In General Relativity, the constraint equation relating metric and density perturbations is inherently nonlinear, leading to an effective non-Gaussianity in the dark matter density field on large scales - even if the primordial metric…
General N=(1,1) dilaton supergravity in two dimensions allows a background independent exact quantization of the geometric part, if these theories are formulated as specific graded Poisson-sigma models. In this work the extension of earlier…
According to common lore, massive elementary higher spin particles lead to inconsistencies when coupled to gravity. However, this scenario was not completely ruled out by previous arguments. In this paper, we show that in a theory where the…
We give the detailed derivation of the fully covariant form of the quadratic action and the derived linear equations of motion for a massive graviton in an arbitrary background metric (which were presented in arXiv:1410.8302 [hep-th]). Our…
We discuss the dRGT massive gravity interacting with spin-0, spin-1/2, or spin-1 matter. The effective theory of a massive spin-2 particle coupled to matter particles is constructed directly at the amplitude level. In this setting we…
It has been pointed out that non-singular cosmological solutions in second-order scalar-tensor theories generically suffer from gradient instabilities. We extend this no-go result to second-order gravitational theories with an arbitrary…
We investigate a possible unified theory of all interactions which is based only on fundamental spinor fields. The vielbein and metric arise as composite objects. The effective quantum gravitational theory can lead to a modification of…