English

Coordinate singularities of self-interacting vector field theories

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-01-19 v2

Abstract

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 equation cannot be satisfied beyond a point where the breakdown occurs, (ii) the dynamics is governed by an effective metric that becomes singular at the breakdown. We show that (i) identifies a coordinate singularity, and can be removed by a change of coordinates. Hence, it does not signify a physical problem, and cannot determine the validity of a theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.08027,
  title  = {Coordinate singularities of self-interacting vector field theories},
  author = {Andrew Coates and Fethi M. Ramazanoğlu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.08027},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes to bring into line with published version in PRL

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:56:13.865Z