Degravitation of the cosmological constant and graviton width

Journal Article · Mon Oct 15 04:00:00 EDT 2007 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.76.084006· OSTI ID:21032453

Dvali, Gia ^[1]; Hofmann, Stefan; Khoury, Justin ^[2]

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1. Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003 (United States)
2. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline St. N., Waterloo, ON, N2L 2Y5 (Canada)

We study the possibility of decoupling gravity from the vacuum energy. This is effectively equivalent to promoting Newton's constant to a high-pass filter that degravitates sources of characteristic wavelength larger than a certain macroscopic (super) horizon scale L. We study the underlying physics and the consistency of this phenomenon. In particular, the absence of ghosts, already at the linear level, implies that in any such theory the graviton should either have a mass 1/L, or be a resonance of similar width. This has profound physical implications for the degravitation idea.

• OSTI ID: 21032453
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 76; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
DECOUPLING
GRAVITATION
GRAVITONS
MESONS
PARTICLE WIDTHS
QUANTUM GRAVITY
REST MASS
WAVELENGTHS