Massive gravity

Abstract

The concept of mass has been central in many areas of physics. Gravitation is not an exception, and it has been one of the long-standing questions whether the graviton, a spin-2 particle that mediates gravity, can have a non-vanishing mass or not. This question is relevant from not only theoretical but also phenomenological viewpoints, since a nonzero graviton mass may lead to late-time acceleration of the universe and thus may be considered as an alternative to dark energy.In 2010, de Rham, Gabadadze and Tolley proposed the first example of a fully nonlinear massive gravity theory and showed that the so called Boulware–Deser ghost, which had been one of the major obstacles against a stable nonlinear theory of massive gravity since 1972, can be removed by construction. Since then, nonlinear massive gravity has been attracting significant interest among physicists and cosmologists.The nonlinear theory of massive gravity provides a theoretical framework in which properties of the remaining five physical degrees of freedom of massive gravity can be studied. As always with any low-energy effective theories, one of the first tasks would be to identify good and bad backgrounds. Depending on the choice of backgrounds, some of the five degrees of freedom may become strongly coupled, may exhibit instantaneous propagation, or may lead to ghost/gradient instabilities. A related subject is to seek interesting solutions such as those relevant for astrophysical objects and those describing self-accelerating cosmology. Those solutions will allow us to study phenomenological and cosmological implications of the theory. Yet another important task would be to seek a possible (partial) UV completion that can be applied beyond the regime of validity of the low-energy effective theory that we currently know of.We invited articles to cover those important subjects in massive gravity. Given the recent rapid developments in the field, however, it must be noted that this focus issue should be best considered as a snapshot. We still hope that the collection of articles provides readers with guidance to the research at the frontier and ideally expedites further progress in the field.Shinji Mukohyama Guest Editor