arXiv subjects

Kurt Hinterbichler

Publications and source records attributed to Kurt Hinterbichler.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Kaluza-Klein Reduction of Massive and Partially Massless Spin-2 Fields

We describe the dimensional reduction of massive and partially massless spin-2 fields on general Einstein direct product manifolds. As with massless fields, the higher-dimensional gauge symmetry of the partially massless field displays itself upon dimensional reduction as a tower of Stückelberg symmetries for the massive modes of the tower. Unlike the massless case, the zero mode of the gauge symmetry does not display itself as a lower-dimensional non-Stuckelberg gauge symmetry enforcing partial masslessness on the zero mode. Partial masslessness is destroyed by the dimensional reduction and the zero mode gauge symmetry instead serves to eliminate the radion. In addition, we study the fully non-linear dimensional reduction of dRGT massive gravity on a circle, which results in a massive scalar-tensor-vector theory which we expect to be ghost-free, and whose scalar-tensor sector is a special case of mass-varying massive gravity.

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arXiv2019

Shift-Symmetric Spin-1 Theories

We study interacting massive spin-1 theories in de Sitter (dS) and anti-de Sitter (AdS) space that possess shift symmetries parametrized by (A)dS Killing vectors. We show how they emerge from the massless limit of massive spin-2 theories on (A)dS space. In the case of massive gravity, the corresponding spin-1 theory realizes a symmetry breaking pattern that takes two copies of the (A)dS isometry group down to a diagonal subgroup. By taking the flat space limit of this theory, we find a new symmetry of the decoupling limit of massive gravity in flat space. This symmetry acts on the vector modes, is parametrized by an antisymmetric tensor, and fixes the nonlinear structure of the scalar-vector sector of the decoupling limit.

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arXiv2018

On the (A)dS Decoupling Limits of Massive Gravity

We consider various decoupling limits of ghost-free massive gravity on (A)dS. The first is a decoupling limit on AdS space where the mass goes to zero while the AdS radius is held fixed. This results in an interacting massive Proca vector theory with a $Λ_2\sim (M_{\rm Pl} m)^{1/2}$ strong coupling scale which is ghost-free by construction and yet can not be put in the form of the generalized Proca theories considered so far. We comment on the existence of a potential duality between this Proca theory and a CFT on the boundary. The second decoupling limit we consider is a new limit on dS, obtained by sending the mass towards the finite partially massless value. We do this by introducing the scalar Stückelberg field which restores the partially massless symmetry. For generic values of the parameters, only a finite number of operators enter the partially massless decoupling limit and take the form of dS Galileons. If the interactions are chosen to be precisely those of the `candidate' non-linear partially massless theory, the resulting strong coupling scale has a higher value and the resulting decoupling limit includes an infinite number of interactions which we give in closed form. These interactions preserve both the linear partially massless symmetry and the dS version of the Galileon shift symmetry.

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arXiv2018

Supersymmetric Partially Massless Fields and Non-Unitary Superconformal Representations

We find and classify the ${\cal N}=1$ SUSY multiplets on AdS$_4$ 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 AdS$_4$ 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.

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arXiv2018

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.

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arXiv2018

Ghost-Free Derivative Interactions for a Massive Graviton

If the kinetic interactions of a Lorentz-invariant massive graviton are Einstein-Hilbert, then the only possible potential terms free from the Boulware-Deser ghost are those of de Rham, Gabadadze and Tolley (dRGT). We point out there are other possibilities if the kinetic terms are not required to be Einstein-Hilbert. We construct pseudo-linear ghost-free potentials, terms that derive in a natural way from the linear theory. The simplicity of this approach allows us to construct diffeomorphism non-invariant higher-derivative interaction terms that do not introduce ghosts. We conjecture that these terms should have counterparts in the full dRGT theory. These terms would introduce new free parameters into the theory and may change some of the conclusions heretofore drawn.

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arXiv2018

Bounds on Amplitudes in Effective Theories with Massive Spinning Particles

We consider a procedure for directly constructing general tree-level four-particle scattering amplitudes of massive spinning particles that are consistent with the usual requirements of Lorentz invariance, unitarity, crossing symmetry, and locality. There are infinitely many such amplitudes, but we can isolate interesting theories by bounding the high-energy growth of the tree amplitudes within the effective field theory. This allows us to set model-independent lower bounds on the growth of tree-level amplitudes in any effective field theory with a given particle content and any interaction terms with an arbitrary but finite number of derivatives. In certain common cases this corresponds to finding the highest possible strong coupling scale. When applied to spin 2, we show that the only amplitudes that saturate this bound are generated by the known ghost-free theories of a massive spin-2 particle, namely dRGT massive gravity and the pseudolinear theory. We also make a conjecture for the allowed growth of tree amplitudes in a theory with a single massive particle of any integer spin.

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arXiv2018

A Universal Bound on the Strong Coupling Scale of a Gravitationally Coupled Massive Spin-2 Particle

We find a model-independent upper bound on the strong coupling scale for a massive spin-2 particle coupled to Einstein gravity. Our approach is to directly construct tree-level scattering amplitudes for these degrees of freedom and use them to find the maximum scale of perturbative unitarity violation. The highest scale is $Λ_3=\left(m^2M_P\right)^{1/3}$, which is saturated by ghost-free bigravity. The strong coupling scale can be further raised to $M_P$ if the kinetic term for one particle has the wrong sign, which uniquely gives the amplitudes of quadratic curvature gravity. We also discuss the generalization to massive higher-spin particles coupled to gravity.

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arXiv2018

Massive and Massless Spin-2 Scattering and Asymptotic Superluminality

We constrain theories of a massive spin-2 particle coupled to a massless spin-2 particle by demanding the absence of a time advance in eikonal scattering. This is an $S$-matrix consideration that leads to model-independent constraints on the cubic vertices present in the theory. Of the possible cubic vertices for the two spin-2 particles, the requirement of subluminality leaves a particular linear combination of cubic vertices of the Einstein--Hilbert type. Either the cubic vertices must appear in this combination or new physics must enter at a scale parametrically the same as the mass of the massive spin-2 field. These conclusions imply that there is a one-parameter family of ghost-free bimetric theories of gravity that are consistent with subluminal scattering. When both particles couple to additional matter, subluminality places additional constraints on the matter couplings. We additionally reproduce these constraints by considering classical scattering off of a shockwave background in the ghost-free bimetric theory.

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arXiv2018

Eikonal Scattering and Asymptotic Superluminality of Massless Higher Spin Fields

We consider scattering of massless higher-spin particles in the eikonal regime in four dimensions. By demanding the absence of asymptotic superluminality, corresponding to positivity of the eikonal phase, we place constraints on the possible cubic couplings which can appear in the theory. The cubic couplings come in two types: lower-derivative non-abelian vertices, and higher-derivative abelian vertices made out of gauge-invariant curvature tensors. We find that the abelian couplings between massless higher spins lead to an asymptotic time advance for certain choices of polarizations, indicating that these couplings should be absent unless new states come in at the scale suppressing the derivatives in these couplings. A subset of non-abelian cubic couplings are consistent with eikonal positivity, but are ruled out by consistency of the four-particle amplitude away from the eikonal limit. The eikonal constraints are therefore complementary to the four-particle test, ruling out even trivial cubic curvature couplings in any theory with a finite number of massless higher spins and no new physics at the scale suppressing derivatives in these vertices.

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arXiv2018

Pseudo-Linear Spin-2 Interactions

We show how the pseudo-linear interactions for spin-2 particles can be straightforwardly extended to include multiple massive and massless fields without introducing ghosts. When massive spin-2 fields are included, these give simple analogues of bi-gravity and multi-gravity theories with mass terms that break linear gauge symmetries. The interactions containing only massless particles cannot be written in terms of linearized curvature tensors and are gauge invariant only up to a total derivative. These correspond to known theories that exist in more than four dimensions and evade the no-go results on interacting massless spin-2 particles.

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arXiv2018

A Hidden Symmetry of the Galileon

We show that there is a special choice of parameters for which the galileon theory is invariant under an enhanced shift symmetry whose non-linear part is quadratic in the coordinates. This symmetry fixes the theory to be equivalent to one with only even powers of the field, with no free coefficients, and accounts for the improved soft limit behavior observed in the quartic galileon S-matrix.

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arXiv2017

Massive Spin-2 Scattering and Asymptotic Superluminality

We place model-independent constraints on theories of massive spin-2 particles by considering the positivity of the phase shift in eikonal scattering. The phase shift is an asymptotic $S$-matrix observable, related to the time delay/advance experienced by a particle during scattering. Demanding the absence of a time advance leads to constraints on the cubic vertices present in the theory. We find that, in theories with massive spin-2 particles, requiring no time advance means that either: (i) the cubic vertices must appear as a particular linear combination of the Einstein-Hilbert cubic vertex and an $h_{μν}^3$ potential term or (ii) new degrees of freedom or strong coupling must enter at parametrically the mass of the massive spin-2 field. These conclusions have implications for a variety of situations. Applied to theories of large-$N$ QCD, this indicates that any spectrum with an isolated massive spin-2 at the bottom must have these particular cubic self-couplings. Applied to de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley massive gravity, the constraint is in accord with and generalizes previous results obtained from a shockwave calculation: of the two free dimensionless parameters in the theory there is a one parameter line consistent with a subluminal phase shift.

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arXiv2017

TDiff and Weyl Invariant Massive Spin-2: Linear Theory

We use Kaluza-Klein reduction to construct flat-space massive spin-2 Lagrangians based on a kinetic term that has local Weyl and transverse-diffeomorphism gauge symmetries in the massless limit. This yields Lagrangians describing a free massive spin 2 which differ from the usual Fierz-Pauli theory, but are physically equivalent to it. These Lagrangians require the use of auxiliary fields, which appear naturally from the higher-dimensional construction. We discuss how these Lagrangians are related to each other and to the Fierz-Pauli theory through Stückelberg transformations, gauge fixings, and field replacements, and we use this to generalize the construction to spin-2 fields on Einstein manifolds.

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arXiv2017

Partially Massless Monopoles and Charges

Massive higher spin fields on de Sitter space exhibit enhanced gauge symmetries at special values of the mass. These fields are known as "partially massless." We study the structure of the charges and Gauss laws which characterize sources for the partially massless spin-2. Despite having a simple scalar gauge symmetry, there is a rich structure of gauge charges. The charges come in electric and magnetic varieties, each taking values in the fundamental representation of the de Sitter group. We find two invariant electric-like charges and two invariant magnetic-like charges and we find the point-like monopole solutions which carry these charges, analogous to the electric point charge solution and Dirac monopole solution of Maxwell electrodynamics. These solutions are related by partially massless duality, analogous to the electromagnetic duality that relates electric to magnetic charges.

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arXiv2017

Partially Massless Higher-Spin Theory II: One-Loop Effective Actions

We continue our study of a generalization of the D-dimensional linearized Vasiliev higher-spin equations to include a tower of partially massless (PM) fields. We compute one-loop effective actions by evaluating zeta functions for both the "minimal" and "non-minimal" parity-even versions of the theory. Specifically, we compute the log-divergent part of the effective action in odd-dimensional Euclidean AdS spaces for D=7 through 19 (dual to the a-type conformal anomaly of the dual boundary theory), and the finite part of the effective action in even-dimensional Euclidean AdS spaces for D=4 through 8 (dual to the free energy on a sphere of the dual boundary theory). We pay special attention to the case D=4, where module mixings occur in the dual field theory and subtlety arises in the one-loop computation. The results provide evidence that the theory is UV complete and one-loop exact, and we conjecture and provide evidence for a map between the inverse Newton's constant of the partially massless higher-spin theory and the number of colors in the dual CFT.

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arXiv2017

Free box^k Scalar Conformal Field Theory

We consider the generalizations of the free U(N) and O(N) scalar conformal field theories to actions with higher powers of the Laplacian box^k, in general dimension d. We study the spectra, Verma modules, anomalies and OPE of these theories. We argue that in certain d and k, the spectrum contains zero norm operators which are both primary and descendant, as well as extension operators which are neither primary nor descendant. In addition, we argue that in even dimensions d <= 2k, there are well-defined operator algebras which are related to the box^k theories and are novel in that they have a finite number of single-trace states.

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arXiv2017

Partially Massless Higher-Spin Theory

We study a generalization of the D-dimensional Vasiliev theory to include a tower of partially massless fields. This theory is obtained by replacing the usual higher-spin algebra of Killing tensors on (A)dS with a generalization that includes "third-order" Killing tensors. Gauging this algebra with the Vasiliev formalism leads to a fully non-linear theory which is expected to be UV complete, includes gravity, and can live on dS as well as AdS. The linearized spectrum includes three massive particles and an infinite tower of partially massless particles, in addition to the usual spectrum of particles present in the Vasiliev theory, in agreement with predictions from a putative dual CFT with the same symmetry algebra. We compute the masses of the particles which are not fixed by the massless or partially massless gauge symmetry, finding precise agreement with the CFT predictions. This involves computing several dozen of the lowest-lying terms in the expansion of the trilinear form of the enlarged higher-spin algebra. We also discuss nuances in the theory that occur in specific dimensions; in particular, the theory dramatically truncates in bulk dimensions D=3,5 and has non-diagonalizable mixings which occur in D=4,7.

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