NEW CLASS OF METRIC THEORIES OF GRAVITY NOT DESCRIBED BY THE PARAMETRIZED POST-NEWTONIAN (PPN) FORMALISM

Abstract

After an introduction to theories of gravity alternative to general relativity, metric theories (Sec. 1) and the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism (Sec. 2), we define a new class of metric theories of gravity (Sec. 3). It turns out that the post-Newtonian approximation of these new theories is not described by the PPN formalism (Sec. 4); in fact, in the limit of weak field and slow motions, the post-Newtonian expression of the metric tensor contains an, a priori, infinite set of new terms and correspondingly an, a priori, infinite set of new PPN parameters. As a consequence, the parametrized post-Newtonian formulas describing the classical relativistic tests should include these new parameters, and therefore the experimental values of the classical relativistic effects should not be used to put limits only on the standard ten PPN parameters. Finally, we note that a subset of this new class of theories has the same post-Newtonian limit and value of the PPN parameters as general relativity, and therefore is automatically in agreement with the classical general-relativistic tests (Sec. 4, theory III).