Mass for the graviton
نویسنده
چکیده
Can we give the graviton a mass? Does it even make sense to speak of a massive graviton? In this essay I shall answer these questions in the affirmative. I shall outline an alternative to Einstein Gravity that satisfies the Equivalence Principle and automatically passes all classical weak-field tests (GM/r ≈ 10). It also passes medium-field tests (GM/r ≈ 1/5), but exhibits radically different strong-field behaviour (GM/r ≈ 1). Black holes in the usual sense do not exist in this theory, and large-scale cosmology is divorced from the distribution of matter. Furthermore, the cosmological constant is a non-issue in this theory. To do all this we have to sacrifice something: the theory exhibits prior geometry, and depends on a non-dynamical background metric.
منابع مشابه
Nonperturbative Continuity in Graviton Mass versus Perturbative Discontinuity
We address the question whether a graviton could have a small nonzero mass. The issue is subtle for two reasons: there is a discontinuity in the mass in the lowest tree-level approximation, and, moreover, the nonlinear four-dimensional theory of a massive graviton is not defined unambiguously. First, we reiterate the old argument that for the vanishing graviton mass the lowest tree-level approx...
متن کاملSignatures of a Graviton Mass in the Cosmic Microwave Background
There exist consistent low energy effective field theories describing gravity in the Higgs phase that allow the coexistence of massive gravitons and the conventional 1/r potential of gravity. In an effort to constrain the value of the graviton mass in these theories, we study the tensor contribution to the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization spectra in the presence of a non-vanishing gr...
متن کاملThe Mass of Graviton and Its Relation to the Number of Information according to the Holographic Principle
We investigate the relation of the mass of the graviton to the number of information N in a flat universe. As a result we find that the mass of the graviton scales as [Formula: see text]. Furthermore, we find that the number of gravitons contained inside the observable horizon is directly proportional to the number of information N; that is, N gr ∝ N. Similarly, the total mass of gravitons that...
متن کاملMassive Gravity on a Brane
At present no theory of a massive graviton is known that is consistent with experiments at both long and short distances. The problem is that consistency with long distance experiments requires the graviton mass to be very small. Such a small graviton mass however implies an ultraviolet cutoff for the theory at length scales far larger than the millimeter scale at which gravity has already been...
متن کاملBounds upon Graviton Mass – using the difference between graviton propagation speed and HFGW transit speed to observe post-Newtonian corrections to gravitational potential fields Updated to take into account early universe cosmology
The author presents a post-Newtonian approximation based upon an earlier argument in a paper by Clifford Will as to Yukawa revisions of gravitational potentials, in part initiated by gravitons having explicit mass dependence in their Compton wave length. Prior work with Clifford Will’s idea was stymied by the application to binary stars and other such astrophysical objects, with non-useful freq...
متن کاملGraviton Mass or Cosmological Constant?
To describe a massive graviton in 4D Minkowski space-time one introduces a quadratic term in the Lagrangian. This term, however, can lead to a readjustment or instability of the background instead of describing a massive graviton on flat space. We show that for all local Lorentz-invariant mass terms Minkowski space is unstable. We start with the Pauli-Fierz (PF) term that is the only local mass...
متن کامل