The recovery of General Relativity in massive gravity via the Vainshtein mechanism

We study in detail static spherically symmetric solutions of non linear Pauli-Fierz theory. We obtain a numerical solution with a constant density source. This solution shows a recovery of the corresponding solution of General Relativity via the Vainshtein mechanism. This result has already been presented by us in a recent letter, and we give here more detailed information on it as well as on the procedure used to obtain it. We give new analytic insights upon this problem, in particular for what concerns the question of the number of solutions at infinity. We also present a weak field limit which allows to capture all the salient features of the numerical solution, including the Vainshtein crossover and the Yukawa decay.Comment: 38 pages, 9 Figs, revtex

Recovering General Relativity from massive gravity

We obtain static, spherically symmetric, and asymptotically flat numerical solutions of massive gravity with a source. Those solutions show, for the first time explicitly, a recovery of the Schwarzschild solution of General Relativity via the so-called Vainshtein mechanism.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor changes, matches published versio

The Vainshtein mechanism in the Decoupling Limit of massive gravity

We investigate static spherically symmetric solutions of nonlinear massive gravities. We first identify, in an ansatz appropriate to the study of those solutions, the analog of the decoupling limit (DL) that has been used in the Goldstone picture description. We show that the system of equations left over in the DL has regular solutions featuring a Vainshtein-like recovery of solutions of General Relativity (GR). Hence, the singularities found to arise integrating the full nonlinear system of equations are not present in the DL, despite the fact those singularities are usually thought to be due to a negative energy mode also seen in this limit. Moreover, we show that the scaling conjectured by Vainshtein at small radius is only a limiting case in an infinite family of non singular solutions each showing a Vainshtein recovery of GR solutions below the Vainshtein radius but a different common scaling at small distances. This new scaling is shown to be associated with a zero mode of the nonlinearities left over in the DL. We also show that, in the DL, this scaling allows for a recovery of GR solutions even for potentials where the original Vainshtein mechanism is not working. Our results imply either that the DL misses some important features of nonlinear massive gravities or that important features of the solutions of the full nonlinear theory have been overlooked. They could also have interesting outcomes for the DGP model and related proposals.Comment: 52 pages, 7 figures; v3: minor typos corrected, discussion of the validity of the Decoupling Limit extended; accepted for publication in JHE

How Far Are We from the Quantum Theory of Gravity?

I give a pedagogical explanation of what it is about quantization that makes general relativity go from being a nearly perfect classical theory to a very problematic quantum one. I also explain why some quantization of gravity is unavoidable, why quantum field theories have divergences, why the divergences of quantum general relativity are worse than those of the other forces, what physicists think this means and what they might do with a consistent theory of quantum gravity if they had one. Finally, I discuss the quantum gravitational data that have recently become available from cosmology.Comment: 106 page review article solicited by Reports on Progress in Physic

k-Mouflage gravity

We introduce a large class of scalar-tensor theories where gravity becomes stronger at large distances via the exchange of a scalar that mixes with the graviton. At small distances, i.e. large curvature, the scalar is screened via an analog of the Vainshtein mechanism of massive gravity. The crossover distance between the two regimes can be made cosmological by an appropriate choice of the parameters.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure. Essay written for the Gravity Research Foundation 2009 Awards for Essays on Gravitation, awarded a honorable mentio