Related papers: The intrinsic pathology of self-interacting vector…

Various groups recently argued that self-interacting vector field theories lack a well-defined time evolution when the field grows to large amplitudes, which has drastic consequences for models in gravity and high energy theory. Such field…

Self-interacting vectors are seeing a burst of interest where various groups demonstrated that the field evolution ends in finite time. Two nonequivalent criteria have been offered to identify this breakdown: (i) the vector constraint…

Massive vector fields feature in several areas of particle physics, e.g., as carriers of weak interactions, dark matter candidates, or as an effective description of photons in a plasma. Here we investigate vector fields with…

Various groups recently demonstrated that the time evolution of simplest self-interacting vector fields, those with self-interaction potentials, can break down after a finite duration in what is called loss of hyperbolicity. We establish…

We study massive self-interacting vector field theories with mass added ``by hand". We show that the massless limit of the quartic self-interacting vector field theory is not smooth. Pathological behavior of the theory is not limited only…

We discuss a consistent theory for a self-interacting vector field, breaking an Abelian symmetry in such a way to obtain an interesting behavior for its longitudinal polarization. In an appropriate decoupling limit, the dynamics of the…

We consider theories for scalar and vector fields coupled to the energy-momentum tensor. Since these fields also carry a non-trivial energy-momentum tensor, the coupling prescription generates self-interactions. In analogy with gravity…

We extend previous results on healthy derivative self-interactions for a Proca field to the case of a set of massive vector fields. We obtain non-gauge invariant derivative self-interactions for the vector fields that maintain the…

It has been argued that a self-interacting massive vector field is pathological due to a dynamical formation of a singular effective metric of the vector field, which is the onset of a gradient or ghost instability. We discuss that this…

In general relativity, Maxwell's equations are embedded in curved spacetime through the minimal prescription, but this could change if strong-gravity modifications are present. We show that with a nonminimal coupling between gravity and a…

Interacting massive spin-1 fields have been widely used in cosmology and particle physics. We obtain a new condition on the validity of the classical limit of these theories related to the non-trivial constraints that exist for vector field…

Vector fields in the expanding Universe are considered within the multidimensional theory of General Relativity. Vector fields in general relativity form a three-parametric variety. Our consideration includes the fields with a nonzero…

Scalar fields coupled to dark matter by conformal or disformal transformations give rise to a general class of scalar-tensor theories which leads to a rich phenomenology in a cosmological setting. While this possibility has been studied…

We study the dynamics of a timelike vector field which violates Lorentz invariance when the background spacetime is in an accelerating phase in the early universe. It is shown that a timelike vector field is difficult to realize an…

Recently proposed theories based on the cosmic presence of a vectorial field are compared and contrasted. In particular the so called Einstein aether theory is discussed in parallel with a recent proposal of a strained space-time theory…

Previous studies have identified potential instabilities in self-interacting vector theories associated with the breakdown of the well-posedness of the initial-value problem. However, these conclusions are restricted to Abelian vector…

We show that the spontaneous scalarization scenario in scalar-tensor theories is a specific case of a more general phenomenon. The key fact is that the instability causing the spontaneous growth in scalars is due to the nonminimal coupling…

We show that higher form fields, specifically 2- and 3-forms in four spacetime dimensions, suffer from loss of hyperbolicity when they have self interaction. The equations of motion lose their wave-like characteristic in certain parts of…

We present a detailed study of the cosmological evolution in general vector-tensor theories of gravity without potential terms. We consider the evolution of the vector field throughout the expansion history of the universe and carry out a…

A class of vector-tensor theories arises naturally in the framework of quadratic gravity in spacetimes with linear vector distortion. Requiring the absence of ghosts for the vector field imposes an interesting condition on the allowed…