Theoretical Aspects of Massive Gravity

Massive gravity has seen a resurgence of interest due to recent progress which has overcome its traditional problems, yielding an avenue for addressing important open questions such as the cosmological constant naturalness problem. The possibility of a massive graviton has been studied on and off for the past 70 years. During this time, curiosities such as the vDVZ discontinuity and the Boulware-Deser ghost were uncovered. We re-derive these results in a pedagogical manner, and develop the St\"ukelberg formalism to discuss them from the modern effective field theory viewpoint. We review recent progress of the last decade, including the dissolution of the vDVZ discontinuity via the Vainshtein screening mechanism, the existence of a consistent effective field theory with a stable hierarchy between the graviton mass and the cutoff, and the existence of particular interactions which raise the maximal effective field theory cutoff and remove the ghosts. In addition, we review some peculiarities of massive gravitons on curved space, novel theories in three dimensions, and examples of the emergence of a massive graviton from extra-dimensions and brane worlds.Comment: 141 pages. Expanded version of an article invited for Reviews of Modern Physics. v2 corrections, updated with new development

Classical Duals of Derivatively Self-Coupled Theories

Solutions to scalar theories with derivative self-couplings often have regions where non-linearities are important. Given a classical source, there is usually a region, demarcated by the Vainshtein radius, inside of which the classical non-linearities are dominant, while quantum effects are still negligible. If perturbation theory is used to find such solutions, the expansion generally breaks down as the Vainshtein radius is approached from the outside. Here we show that it is possible, by integrating in certain auxiliary fields, to reformulate these theories in such a way that non-linearities become small inside the Vainshtein radius, and large outside it. This provides a complementary, or classically dual, description of the same theory -- one in which non-perturbative regions become accessible perturbatively. We consider a few examples of classical solutions with various symmetries, and find that in all the cases the dual formulation makes it rather simple to study regimes in which the original perturbation theory fails to work. As an illustration, we reproduce by perturbative calculations some of the already known non-perturbative results, for a point-like source, cosmic string, and domain wall, and derive a new one. The dual formulation may be useful for developing the PPN formalism in the theories of modified gravity that give rise to such scalar theories.Comment: 20 pages. v2 refs adde

Multi-field galileons and higher co-dimension branes

In the decoupling limit, the DGP model reduces to the theory of a scalar field pi, with interactions including a specific cubic self-interaction - the galileon term. This term, and its quartic and quintic generalizations, can be thought of as arising from a probe 3-brane in a 5-dimensional bulk with Lovelock terms on the brane and in the bulk. We study multi-field generalizations of the galileon, and extend this probe brane view to higher co-dimensions. We derive an extremely restrictive theory of multiple galileon fields, interacting through a quartic term controlled by a single coupling, and trace its origin to the induced brane terms coming from Lovelock invariants in the higher co-dimension bulk. We explore some properties of this theory, finding de Sitter like self accelerating solutions. These solutions have ghosts if and only if the flat space theory does not have ghosts. Finally, we prove a general non-renormalization theorem: multi-field galileons are not renormalized quantum mechanically to any loop in perturbation theory.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures. v2 typos corrected, comments added, version appearing in PR