English

New Branches of Massive Gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-07-08 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The basic building block for Lorentz invariant and ghost free massive gravity is the square root of the combination g1ηg^{-1}\eta\,, where g1g^{-1} is the inverse of the physical metric and η\eta is a reference metric. Since the square root of a matrix is not uniquely defined, it is possible to have physically inequivalent potentials corresponding to different branches. We show that around Minkowski background the only perturbatively well defined branch is the potential proposed by de Rham, Gabadadze and Tolley. On the other hand, if Lorentz symmetry is broken spontaneously, other potentials exist with a standard perturbative expansion. We show this explicitly building new Lorentz invariant, ghost-free massive gravity potentials for theories that in the background preserve rotational invariance, but break Lorentz boosts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.00632,
  title  = {New Branches of Massive Gravity},
  author = {Denis Comelli and Marco Crisostomi and Kazuya Koyama and Luigi Pilo and Gianmassimo Tasinato},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.00632},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:27:38.514Z