Nonperturbative Continuity in Graviton Mass versus Perturbative Discontinuity

By Cedric Deffayet, G. Dvali, G. Gabadadze, A. Vainshtein. 2001

448 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We address the question whether a graviton could have a small nonzero mass. The issue is subtle for two reasons: there is a discontinuity in the mass in the lowest tree-level approximation, and, moreover, the nonlinear four-dimensional theory of a massive graviton is not defined unambiguously. First, we reiterate the old argument that for the vanishing graviton mass the lowest tree-level approximation breaks down since the higher order corrections are singular in the graviton mass. However, there exist nonperturbative solutions which correspond to the summation of the singular terms and these solutions are continuous in the graviton mass. Furthermore, we study a completely nonlinear and generally covariant five-dimensional model which mimics the properties of the four-dimensional theory of massive gravity. We show that the exact solutions of the model are continuous in the mass, yet the perturbative expansion exhibits the discontinuity in the leading order and the singularities in higher orders as in the four-dimensional case. Based on exact cosmological solutions of the model we argue that the helicity-zero graviton state which is responsible for the perturbative discontinuity decouples from the matter in the limit of vanishing graviton mass in the full classical theory.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/548d37431370ff0b9a965e33e93d02347b6bd3ca

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Cascading gravity and degravitation (2007, methodology): “As in the standard DGP model, we expect this effect to be an artifact of perturbation theory [18].”
Horndeski theory and beyond: a review (2019, background): “n mechanism [213, 214], in which the eﬀective potential for φdepends on the local energy density through the coupling of φto matter. The latter case is based on the idea of Vainshtein [215] (see also [216]) and is called the Vainshtein mechanism. (There are other screening mechanisms called symmetro”
Photon and graviton mass limits (2008, background): “Vainshtein’s argument for consistency of a non-zero graviton mass with local observations in non-linear gravity is supported, but the reach of observation to the edge of the visible universe is inconsistent with a graviton Compton wavelength significantly smaller than the radius of that universe, ju”
Degravitation of the cosmological constant and graviton width (2007, methodology): “From the perspective of the helicity-0 graviton the difference with massive gravity is that in DGP the equation for the helicity-0 mode is not higher-derivative [22, 23].”
Modified Gravity and Cosmology (2011, methodology): “Similar claims have been made in DGP gravity [399], as we will discuss in Section 5.”
D‐branes in Standard Model building, gravity and cosmology (2003, background): “Similar behavior was also observed in [51]-[55],[208].”
Galileon Cosmology (2009, methodology): “The strong coupling behavior is essential to the phenomenological viability of the model through the Vainshtein screening effect [18, 19].”