Post-Newtonian approximations in the Hořava-Lifshitz gravity with extra U(1) symmetry

Abstract

In this paper, we first propose a universal coupling between the gravity and matter in the framework of the Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz theory of gravity with an extra U(1) symmetry for both the projectable and non-projectable cases. Then, using this universal coupling we study the post-Newtonian approximations and obtain the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameters in terms of the coupling constants of the theory. Contrary to the previous works in which only two PPN parameters were calculated, we obtain {\it all} PPN parameters. We then, for the first time in either projectable or non-projectable case, find that all the solar system tests carried out so far are satisfied in a large region of the parameters space. In particular, the same results obtained in general relativity can be easily realized here. A remarkable feature is that the solar system tests impose no constraint on the parameter $\lambda$ appearing in the kinetic part of the action. As a result, the solar system tests, when combined with the condition for avoidance of strong coupling, do not lead to an upper bound on the energy scale $M_{*}$ that suppresses higher dimensional operators in the theory. This is in sharp contrast to other versions of the HL theory.