Can metric-affine gravity be saved?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Barker, Will, Marzo, Carlo, Santoni, Alessandro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Barker, Will
Marzo, Carlo
Santoni, Alessandro
author_facet Barker, Will
Marzo, Carlo
Santoni, Alessandro
contents Like general relativity, metric-affine gravity should be a viable effective quantum theory, otherwise it is a mathematical curiosity without physical application. Assuming a perturbative quantum field theory, the universal, flat limit of metric-affine gravity offers a good foundation for model-building only when symmetry constraints are themselves sufficient to get rid of ghosts and tachyons in the spectrum of propagating particle states, without requiring any further tuning of the couplings. Using this symmetry-first criterion, we find that for parity-preserving models with a totally symmetric distortion, only massless spin-one and spin-three modes are possible besides the graviton. Moreover, no viable models result from gauge symmetries generated by a scalar field.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_23894
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can metric-affine gravity be saved?
Barker, Will
Marzo, Carlo
Santoni, Alessandro
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Like general relativity, metric-affine gravity should be a viable effective quantum theory, otherwise it is a mathematical curiosity without physical application. Assuming a perturbative quantum field theory, the universal, flat limit of metric-affine gravity offers a good foundation for model-building only when symmetry constraints are themselves sufficient to get rid of ghosts and tachyons in the spectrum of propagating particle states, without requiring any further tuning of the couplings. Using this symmetry-first criterion, we find that for parity-preserving models with a totally symmetric distortion, only massless spin-one and spin-three modes are possible besides the graviton. Moreover, no viable models result from gauge symmetries generated by a scalar field.
title Can metric-affine gravity be saved?
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23894