English

Generalised symmetries in linear gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-02-26 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Linearised gravity has a global symmetry under which the graviton is shifted by a symmetric tensor satisfying a certain flatness condition. There is also a dual symmetry that can be associated with a global shift symmetry of the dual graviton theory. The corresponding conserved charges are shown to satisfy a centrally-extended algebra. We discuss the gauging of these global symmetries, finding an obstruction to the simultaneous gauging of both symmetries which we interpret as a mixed 't Hooft anomaly for the ungauged theory. We discuss the implications of this, analogous to those resulting from a similar structure in Maxwell theory, and interpret the graviton and dual graviton as Nambu-Goldstone modes for these shift symmetries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.00178,
  title  = {Generalised symmetries in linear gravity},
  author = {Chris Hull and Maxwell L Hutt and Ulf Lindström},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.00178},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

30 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:29:28.699Z