Gravity with a dynamical preferred frame

By T. Jacobson, D. Mattingly. 2000

771 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study a generally covariant model in which local Lorentz invariance is broken "spontaneously" by a dynamical unit timelike vector field $u^a$---the "aether". Such a model makes it possible to study the gravitational and cosmological consequences of preferred frame effects, such as ``variable speed of light" or high frequency dispersion, while preserving a generally covariant metric theory of gravity. In this paper we restrict attention to an action for an effective theory of the aether which involves only the antisymmetrized derivative $\nabla_{[a}u_{b]}$. Without matter this theory is equivalent to a sector of the Einstein-Maxwell-charged dust system. The aether has two massless transverse excitations, and the solutions of the model include all vacuum solutions of general relativity (as well as other solutions). However, the aether generally develops gradient singularities which signal a breakdown of this effective theory. Including the symmetrized derivative in the action for the aether field may cure this problem.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4905676636631c0d9fc9316831ea3aeb49dee9ea

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Citations in the corpus

Cosmic acceleration from Abelian symmetry breaking (2014, methodology): “The first working models were introduced in the early seventies by Will, Nordtvedt, Hellings [12, 13]; more recently, well studied proposals have been the EinsteinAether theory [14] and the TeVeS covariantized version of MOND [15].”
The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment (2005, background): “The general class of theories was analyzed by Jacobson and collaborators [137, 183, 138, 99, 113], motivated in part by [156].”
Black holes in Einstein-aether theory (2006, methodology): “To determine the form of such solutions we can change to the inverse radius variable x = 1/r and expand around x = 0, as was done in [4] (where isotropic coordinates were employed).”
Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND): Observational Phenomenology and Relativistic Extensions (2011, methodology): “Inspired by the fact that EinsteinAether theories [206, 207] also present instabilities when the unit-norm vector field is “Maxwellian” as above, it was simply proposed to use a more general Lagrangian density for the vector field, akin to that of Einstein-Aether theories:”
Modified Gravity and Cosmology (2011, neutral): “2 [656, 655].”
Modern Tests of Lorentz Invariance (2005, background): “However, it turns out that the constrained aether model with the Lagrange multiplier potential also has β = γ = 1 for generic choices of the coefficients [103].”
Degenerate higher order scalar-tensor theories beyond Horndeski and disformal transformations (2016, background): “Indeed, the Lagrangians that remain invariant under a field redefinition of the scalar field correspond to khronometric theories [20], which are a subset of Einstein-Aether theories [21].”
Mimetic Gravity: A Review of Recent Developments and Applications to Cosmology and Astrophysics (2016, background): “An interesting connection which can be identified is that between mimetic gravity and Einstein-aether theories [276, 277] (see also [278–280, 439–444]).”