On the cosmological degrees of freedom of Proca field with non-minimal coupling to gravity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: De Felice, Antonio, Hell, Anamaria
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author De Felice, Antonio
Hell, Anamaria
author_facet De Felice, Antonio
Hell, Anamaria
contents We study Proca theory with non-minimal coupling to gravity through the Ricci tensor and Ricci scalar interactions. We show that in the homogeneous and isotropic Universe together with cosmological constant, the temporal component of the vector field acquires a background value. As a result, we show that the theory propagates an additional degree of freedom, with respect to the generalized Proca theories, whose kinetic term suggests the presence of several strong coupling regimes that depend on the value of the background solution, the combination and vanishing of coupling constants, together with a scale-dependent one. We show in addition, that the speed of propagation for this mode vanishes, indicating the presence of another type of strong coupling. To further investigate this, we extend our analysis to the Bianchi Type I Universe, with the most general solution for the vector field. We show that the extra degree of freedom remains in the theory. Among the modes, we further show that the mode with vanishing speed of propagation is still present, pointing to the strong coupling. In addition, we discover a mode with scale-dependent strong coupling (vanishing kinetic term), one mode that propagates only in one single direction and two unstable modes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_07454
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the cosmological degrees of freedom of Proca field with non-minimal coupling to gravity
De Felice, Antonio
Hell, Anamaria
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
We study Proca theory with non-minimal coupling to gravity through the Ricci tensor and Ricci scalar interactions. We show that in the homogeneous and isotropic Universe together with cosmological constant, the temporal component of the vector field acquires a background value. As a result, we show that the theory propagates an additional degree of freedom, with respect to the generalized Proca theories, whose kinetic term suggests the presence of several strong coupling regimes that depend on the value of the background solution, the combination and vanishing of coupling constants, together with a scale-dependent one. We show in addition, that the speed of propagation for this mode vanishes, indicating the presence of another type of strong coupling. To further investigate this, we extend our analysis to the Bianchi Type I Universe, with the most general solution for the vector field. We show that the extra degree of freedom remains in the theory. Among the modes, we further show that the mode with vanishing speed of propagation is still present, pointing to the strong coupling. In addition, we discover a mode with scale-dependent strong coupling (vanishing kinetic term), one mode that propagates only in one single direction and two unstable modes.
title On the cosmological degrees of freedom of Proca field with non-minimal coupling to gravity
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07454