Massive vectors from projective-invariance breaking

Abstract

A general affine connection has enough degrees of freedom to describe the classical gravitational and electromagnetic fields in the metric-affine formulation of gravity. The gravitational field is represented in the Lagrangian by the symmetric part of the Ricci tensor and the classical electromagnetic field can be represented by the tensor of homothetic curvature. The simplest metric-affine Lagrangian that depends on the tensor of homothetic curvature generates the Einstein-Maxwell equations for a massless vector. Metric-affine Lagrangians with matter fields depending on the connection are subject to an unphysical constraint because the symmetrized Ricci tensor is projectively invariant while matter fields are not. We show that the appearance of the tensor of homothetic curvature, which is not projectively invariant, in the Lagrangian replaces this constraint with the Maxwell equations and restores projective invariance of the total action. We also examine several constraints on the torsion tensor to show that algebraic constraints on the torsion that break projective invariance of the connection and impose projective invariance on the tensor of homothetic curvature replace the massless vector with a massive vector. We conclude that the metric-affine formulation of gravity allows for a mechanism that generates masses of vectors, as it happens for electroweak gauge bosons via spontaneous symmetry breaking.