Massless Graviton Research Articles

Spin-2 Twisted Duality in (A)dS

Starting from the dual Lagrangians recently obtained for (partially) massless spin-2 fields in the Stueckelberg formulation, we write the equations of motion for (partially) massless gravitons in (A)dS in the form of twisted-duality relations. In both cases, the latter admit a smooth flat limit. In the massless case, this limit reproduces the gravitational twisted-duality relations previously known for Minkowski spacetime. In the partially-massless case, our twisted-duality relations preserve the number of degrees of freedom in the flat limit, in the sense that they split into a decoupled pair of dualities for spin-1 and spin-2 fields. Our results apply to spacetimes of any dimension greater than three. In four dimensions, the twisted-duality relations for partially massless fields that appeared in the literature are recovered by gauging away the Stueckelberg field.

Higher order clockwork gravity

We present a higher order generalisation of the clockwork mechanism starting from an underlying non-linear multigravity theory with a single scale and nearest neighbour ghost-free interactions. Without introducing any hierarchies in the underlying potential, this admits a family of Minkowski vacua around which massless graviton fluctuations couple to matter exponentially more weakly than the heavy modes. Although multi-diffeomorphisms are broken to the diagonal subgroup in our theory, an asymmetric distribution of conformal factors in the background vacua translates this diagonal symmetry into an asymmetric shift of the graviton gears. In particular we present a TeV scale multigravity model with ${\cal O}(10)$ sites that contains a massless mode whose coupling to matter is Planckian, and a tower of massive modes starting at a TeV mass range and with TeV strength couplings. This suggests a possible application to the hierarchy problem as well as a candidate for dark matter.

Supersymmetric partially massless fields and non-unitary superconformal representations

We find and classify the mathcal{N}=1 SUSY multiplets on AdS4 which contain partially massless fields. We do this by studying the non-unitary representations of the d = 3 superconformal algebra of the boundary. The simplest super-multiplet which contains a partially massless spin-2 particle also contains a massless photon, a massless spin-3/2 particle and a massive spin-3/2 particle. The gauge parameters form a Wess-Zumino super-multiplet which contains the gauge parameters of the photon, the partially massless graviton, and the massless spin-3/2 particle. We find the AdS4 action and SUSY transformations for this multiplet. More generally, we classify new types of shortening conditions that can arise for non-unitary representations of the d = 3 superconformal algebra.

Universal structure of covariant holographic two-point functions in massless higher-order gravities

We consider massless higher-order gravities in general D = d + 1 dimensions, which are Einstein gravity extended with higher-order curvature invariants in such a way that the linearized spectrum around the AdS vacua involves only the massless graviton. We derive the covariant holographic two-point functions and find that they have a universal structure. In particular, the theory-dependent overall coefficient factor {mathcal{C}}_T can be universally expressed by left(d - 1right){mathcal{C}}_T = ell left(partial a/partial ell right) , where a is the holographic a-charge and ℓ is the AdS radius. We verify this relation in quasi-topological Ricci polynomial, Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet, Einstein-Lovelock and Einstein cubic gravities. In d = 4, we also find an intriguing relation between the holographic c and a charges, namely c=frac{1}{3}ell left(partial a/partial ell right) , which also implies {mathcal{C}}_T=c .

Higher derivative theories for interacting massless gravitons in Minkowski spacetime

We study a novel class of higher derivative theories for interacting massless gravitons in Minkowski spacetime. These theories were first discussed by Wald decades ago, and are characterized by scattering amplitudes essentially different from general relativity and many of its modifications. We discuss various aspects of these higher derivative theories, including the Lagrangian construction, violation of asymptotic causality, scattering amplitudes, non-renormalization, and possible implications in emergent gravitons from condensed matter systems.

Domain wall brane in a reduced Born–Infeld-f(T) theory

The Born–Infeld f(T) theory is reduced from the Born–Infeld determinantal gravity in Weitzenböck spacetime. We investigate a braneworld scenario in this theory and obtain an analytic domain wall solution by utilizing the first-order formalism. The model is stable against the linear tensor perturbation. It is shown that the massless graviton is localized on the brane, but the continuous massive gravitons are non-localized and will generate a tiny correction with the behavior of 1/(kr)3 to the Newtonian potential. The four-dimensional teleparallel gravity is recovered as an effective infrared theory on the brane. As a physical application, we consider the (quasi-)localization property of spin-1/2 Dirac fermion in this model.

Holographic mutual information of two disjoint spheres

We study quantum corrections to holographic mutual information for two disjoint spheres at a large separation by using the operator product expansion of the twist field. In the large separation limit, the holographic mutual information is vanishing at the semiclassical order, but receive quantum corrections from the fluctuations. We show that the leading contributions from the quantum fluctuations take universal forms as suggested from the boundary CFT. We find the universal behavior for the scalar, the vector, the tensor and the fermionic fields by treating these fields as free fields propagating in the fixed background and by using the 1/n prescription. In particular, for the fields with gauge symmetries, including the massless vector boson and massless graviton, we find that the gauge parts in the propagators play an indispensable role in reading the leading order corrections to the bulk mutual information.

Signatures of graviton masses on the CMB

The impact of the existence of gravitons with non-vanishing masses on the B-modes of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is investigated. We also focus on putative modifications to the speed of the gravitational waves. We find that a change of the graviton speed shifts the acoustic peaks of the CMB and then could be easily constrained. For the case of massive gravity, we show analytically how the B-modes are sourced in a manner differing from the massless case leading to a plateau at low l in the CMB spectrum. We also study the case when there are more than one graviton, and when pressure instabilities are present. The latter would occur in doubly coupled bigravity in the radiation era. We focus on the case where a massless graviton becomes tachyonic in the radiation era whilst a massive one remains stable. As the unstable mode decouples from matter in the radiation era, we find that the effects of the instability is largely reduced on the spectrum of B-modes as long as the unstable graviton does not grow into the non-linear regime. In all cases when both massless and massive gravitons are present, we find that the B-mode CMB spectrum is characterised by a low l plateau together with a shifted position for the first few peaks compared to a purely massive graviton spectrum, a shift which depends on the mixing between the gravitons in their coupling to matter and could serve as a hint in favour of the existence of multiple gravitons.

Clockwork graviton contributions to muon g−2

The clockwork mechanism for gravity introduces a tower of massive graviton modes, "clockwork gravitons," with a very compressed mass spectrum, whose interaction strengths are much stronger than that of massless gravitons. In this work, we compute the lowest order contributions of the clockwork gravitons to the anomalous magnetic moment, $g-2$, of muon in the context of extra dimensional model with a five dimensional Planck mass, $M_5$. We find that the total contributions are rather insensitive to the detailed model parameters, and determined mostly by the value of $M_5$. In order to account for the current muon $g-2$ anomaly, $M_5$ should be around $0.2~{\rm TeV}$, and the size of the extra dimension has to be quite large, $l_5 \gtrsim 10^{-7}\,$m. For $M_5\gtrsim1~{\rm TeV}$, the clockwork graviton contributions are too small to explain the current muon $g-2$ anomaly. We also compare the clockwork graviton contributions with other extra dimension models such as Randall-Sundrum models or large extra dimension models. We find that the leading contributions in the small curvature limit are universal, but the cutoff-independent subleading contributions vary for different background geometries and the clockwork geometry gives the smallest subleading contributions.

Quantum Gates to Other Universes

AbstractWe present a microscopic model of a bridge connecting two large Anti‐de‐Sitter Universes. The Universes admit a holographic description as three‐dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories based on large linear quivers, and the bridge is a small rank‐n gauge group that acts as a messenger. On the gravity side, the bridge is a piece of a highly‐curved AdS5 × S5 throat carrying n units of five‐form flux. We derive a universal expression for the mixing of the two massless gravitons: , where M is the mass splitting of the gravitons, are the effective gravitational couplings of the AdS4 Universes, and n is the quantized charge of the gate. This agrees with earlier results based on double‐trace deformations, with the important difference that the effective coupling is quantized. We argue that the apparent non‐localities of holographic double‐trace theories are resolved by integrating‐in the (scarce) degrees of freedom of the gate.

Dark matter scenarios with multiple spin-2 fields

We study ghost-free multimetric theories for (N+1) tensor fields with a coupling to matter and maximal global symmetry group SN×(Z2)N. Their mass spectra contain a massless mode, the graviton, and N massive spin-2 modes. One of the massive modes is distinct by being the heaviest, the remaining (N−1) massive modes are simply identical copies of each other. All relevant physics can therefore be understood from the case N=2. Focussing on this case, we compute the full perturbative action up to cubic order and derive several features that hold to all orders in perturbation theory. The lighter massive mode does not couple to matter and neither of the massive modes decay into massless gravitons. We propose the lighter massive particle as a candidate for dark matter and investigate its phenomenology in the parameter region where the matter coupling is dominated by the massless graviton. The relic density of massive spin-2 can originate from a freeze-in mechanism or from gravitational particle production, giving rise to two different dark matter scenarios. The allowed parameter regions are very different from those in scenarios with only one massive spin-2 field and more accessible to experiments.

Towards a Non-Perturbative Quantum Gravity

In previous work we discussed the quantization of paths in spacetime. Building on these ideas we have developed a mathematically coherent theory addressing a number of open questions concerning Loop Quantum Gravity. Our approach develops a discrete spacetime and shows that macroscopic spacetime is a renormalization limiting form. Weaving together a number of our previous results we then prove that quantum states invariant under either an external group of local diffeomorphisms of spacetime or by contrast quantum states invariant under the internal action of a compact Lie group are common in a well-defined sense. These form the building blocks of invariant fields and Lagrangians. A form of supersymmetry and noncommutative spacetime naturally emerges, which predicts a massless graviton and its companion gravitino.

On the Uniqueness of Ghost-Free Special Gravity

Special gravity refers to interacting theories of massless gravitons in Minkowski space-time which are invariant under the abelian gauge invariance only. In this article we determine the most general form of special gravity free of Ostrogradski ghosts, meaning its equation of motion is of at most second order. Together with the recent works, this result could be helpful in formulating proofs of General Relativity as the unique physical theory of self-interacting massless gravitons. We also study how to construct gauge invariant couplings to matter fields.

Gravitational effective action at second order in curvature and gravitational waves

We consider the full effective theory for quantum gravity at second order in curvature including non-local terms. We show that the theory contains two new degrees of freedom beyond the massless graviton: namely a massive spin-2 ghost and a massive scalar field. Furthermore, we show that it is impossible to fine-tune the parameters of the effective action to eliminate completely the classical spin-2 ghost because of the non-local terms in the effective action. Being a classical field, it is not clear anyway that this ghost is problematic. It simply implies a repulsive contribution to Newton’s potential. We then consider how to extract the parameters of the effective action and show that it is possible to measure, at least in principle, the parameters of the local terms independently of each other using a combination of observations of gravitational waves and measurements performed by pendulum type experiments searching for deviations of Newton’s potential.

On black holes in higher-derivative gravities

We establish various general results concerning static and spherically symmetric black hole solutions of general higher-derivative extensions of Einstein gravity. We prove that the only theories susceptible of admitting solutions with and representing the exterior field of a spherically symmetric distribution of mass are those that only propagate a massless and traceless graviton on the vacuum. Then, we provide a simple—and computationally powerful—sufficient condition for a theory to admit solutions of that kind, as well as a systematic way for constructing them for a given theory. We conjecture (and provide strong evidence) that all black holes constructed according to our criteria are completely determined by their mass (non-hairy), such that their thermodynamic properties can be obtained by solving a system of algebraic equations without free parameters. Our results can be straightforwardly extended to planar and hyperbolic horizons. We illustrate this by obtaining new planar asymptotically AdS5 black hole solutions of the recently constructed generalized quasitopological gravity (Hennigar et al Phys. Rev. D 95 104042), which belongs to the class of theories selected by our results.

Ricci cubic gravity in d dimensions, gravitons and SAdS/Lifshitz black holes

A special class of higher curvature theories of gravity, Ricci cubic gravity (RCG), in general d dimensional space-time has been investigated in this paper. We have used two different approaches, the linearized equations of motion and the auxiliary field formalism to study the massive and massless graviton propagating modes of the AdS background. Using the auxiliary field formalism, we have found the renormalized boundary stress tensor to compute the mass of the Schwarzschild–AdS and Lifshitz black holes in RCG theory.

A noncompact Weyl–Einstein–Yang–Mills model: A semiclassical quantum gravity

We construct and study perturbative unitarity (i.e., ghost and tachyon analysis) of a 3+1-dimensional noncompact Weyl–Einstein–Yang–Mills model. The model describes a local noncompact Weyl’s scale plus SU(N) phase invariant Higgs-like field,conformally coupled to a generic Weyl-invariant dynamical background. Here, the Higgs-like sector generates the Weyl’s conformal invariance of system. The action does not admit any dimensionful parameter and genuine presence of de Sitter vacuum spontaneously breaks the noncompact gauge symmetry in an analogous manner to the Standard Model Higgs mechanism. As to flat spacetime, the dimensionful parameter is generated within the dimensional transmutation in quantum field theories, and thus the symmetry is radiatively broken through the one-loop Effective Coleman–Weinberg potential. We show that the mere expectation of reducing to Einstein’s gravity in the broken phases forbids anti-de Sitter space to be its stable vacua. The model is unitary in de Sitter and flat vacua around which a massless graviton, N2−1 massless scalar bosons, N massless Dirac fermions, N2−1 Proca-type massive Abelian and non-Abelian vector bosons are generically propagated.

Partially massless graviton on beyond Einstein spacetimes

We show that a partially massless graviton can propagate on a large set of spacetimes which are not Einstein spacetimes. Starting from a recently constructed theory for a massive graviton that propagates the correct number of degrees of freedom on an arbitrary spacetime, we first give the full explicit form of the scalar constraint responsible for the absence of a sixth degree of freedom. We then spell out generic conditions for the constraint to be identically satisfied, so that there is a scalar gauge symmetry which makes the graviton partially massless. These simplify if one assumes that spacetime is Ricci symmetric. Under this assumption, we find explicit non-Einstein spacetimes allowing for the propagation of a partially massless graviton.

Entropy of a black hole in infinite-derivative gravity

We compute the Wald entropy of the Schwarzschild black hole in the ghost-free, infinite derivative gravity that is quadratic in curvature. This is not given purely by the area law but includes an additional contribution depending on the power of d'Alembertian operator, when requiring that the massless graviton be the only propagating mode in the Minkowski sapcetime.

Dark energy and doubly coupled bigravity

We analyse the late time cosmology and the gravitational properties of doubly coupled bigravity in the constrained vielbein formalism (equivalent to the metric formalism) when the mass of the massive graviton is of the order of the present Hubble rate. We focus on one of the two branches of background cosmology where the ratio between the scale factors of the two metrics is algebraically determined. We find that the late time physics depends on the mass of the graviton, which dictates the future asymptotic cosmological constant. The Universe evolves from a matter dominated epoch to a dark energy dominated era where the equation of state of dark energy can always be made close to −1 now by appropriately tuning the graviton mass. We also analyse the perturbative spectrum of the theory in the quasi-static approximation, well below the strong coupling scale where no instability is present, and we show that there are five scalar degrees of freedom, two vectors and two gravitons. In Minkowski space, where the four Newtonian potentials vanish, the theory manifestly reduces to one massive and one massless graviton. In a cosmological FRW background for both metrics, four of the five scalars are Newtonian potentials which lead to a modification of gravity on large scales. The fifth one gives rise to a ghost which decouples from pressure-less matter in the quasi-static approximation. In this scalar sector, gravity is modified with effects on both the growth of structure and the lensing potential. In particular, we find that the parameter governing the Poisson equation of the weak lensing potential can differ from one in the recent past of the Universe. Overall, the nature of the modification of gravity at low energy, which reveals itself in the growth of structure and the lensing potential, is intrinsically dependent on the couplings to matter and the potential term of the vielbeins. We also find that the time variation of Newton’s constant in the Jordan frame can easily satisfy the bound from solar system tests of gravity. Finally we show that the two gravitons present in the spectrum have a non-trivial mass matrix whose origin follows from the potential term of bigravity. This mixing leads to gravitational birefringence.