Chiral description of massive gravity

Sergey Alexandrov (1) , Kirill Krasnov (2) , Simone Speziale (3)

1 L2C - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb
2 School of Mathematical Sciences [Nottingham]
3 CPT - Centre de Physique Théorique - UMR 7332

We propose and study a new first order version of the ghost-free massive gravity. Instead of metrics or tetrads, it uses a connection together with Plebanski's chiral 2-forms as fundamental variables, rendering the phase space structure similar to that of SU(2) gauge theories. The chiral description simplifies computations of the constraint algebra, and allows us to perform the complete canonical analysis of the system. In particular, we explicitly compute the secondary constraint and carry out the stabilization procedure, thus proving that in general the theory propagates 7 degrees of freedom, consistently with previous claims. Finally, we point out that the description in terms of 2-forms opens the door to an infinite class of ghost-free massive bi-gravity actions.

Mots clés: Models of Quantum Gravity; Classical Theories of Gravity

Domaines: Physique des Hautes Energies - Théorie [hep-th]; Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique [gr-qc]

Sergey Alexandrov, Kirill Krasnov, Simone Speziale. Chiral description of massive gravity. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2013, 2013 (6), pp.068. ⟨10.1007/JHEP06(2013)068⟩. ⟨hal-00766632⟩