skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Ghosts, strong coupling, and accidental symmetries in massive gravity

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
 [1];  [2]
  1. APC, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris Cedex 05 (France)
  2. Department of Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003 (United States)

We show that the strong self-interaction of the scalar polarization of a massive graviton can be understood in terms of the propagation of an extra ghostlike degree of freedom, thus relating strong coupling to the sixth degree of freedom discussed by Boulware and Deser in their Hamiltonian analysis of massive gravity. This enables one to understand the Vainshtein recovery of solutions of massless gravity as being due to the effect of the exchange of this ghost, which gets frozen at distances larger than the Vainshtein radius. Inside this region, we can trust the two-field Lagrangian perturbatively, while at larger distances one can use the higher derivative formulation. We also compare massive gravity with other models, namely, deconstructed theories of gravity, as well as the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model. In the latter case, we argue that the Vainshtein recovery process is of a different nature, not involving a ghost degree of freedom.

OSTI ID:
20711338
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 72, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.72.044003; (c) 2005 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Covariant constraints in ghost free massive gravity
Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics · OSTI ID:20711338

Galileon as a local modification of gravity
Journal Article · Sun Mar 15 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields · OSTI ID:20711338

Universally coupled massive gravity, III: dRGT–Maheshwari pure spin-2, Ogievetsky–Polubarinov and arbitrary mass terms
Journal Article · Mon Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Annals of Physics · OSTI ID:20711338