Nontrivial vacua in higher-derivative gravitation

Journal Article · Wed May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1996 · Physical Review, D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.53.5597· OSTI ID:284008

Hindawi, A; Ovrut, B A; Waldram, D ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6396 (United States)

A discussion of an extended class of higher-derivative classical theories of gravity is presented. A procedure is given for exhibiting the new propagating degrees of freedom, at the full nonlinear level, by transforming the higher-derivative action to a canonical second-order form. For general fourth-order theories, described by actions which are general functions of the scalar curvature, the Ricci tensor and the full Riemann tensor, it is shown that the higher-derivative theories may have multiple stable vacua. The vacua are shown to be, in general, nontrivial, corresponding to de Sitter or anti{endash}de Sitter solutions of the original theory. It is also shown that around any vacuum the elementary excitations remain the massless graviton, a massive scalar field, and a massive ghostlike spin-two field. The analysis is extended to actions which are arbitrary functions of terms of the form {nabla}{sup 2{ital k}}{ital R}, and it is shown that such theories also have a nontrivial vacuum structure. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.}

• Research Organization: University of Pennsylvania
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76ER03071
• OSTI ID: 284008
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D, Journal Name: Physical Review, D Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 53; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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