Renormalization of Horava Gravity

TL;DR

This paper proves that projectable Horava gravity is perturbatively renormalizable by selecting an appropriate gauge and using background-covariant formalism, addressing key aspects of its quantum consistency.

Contribution

It demonstrates the perturbative renormalizability of projectable Horava gravity with a specific gauge choice and formalism, advancing understanding of its quantum properties.

Findings

Perturbative renormalizability of projectable Horava gravity established.

A gauge ensuring correct anisotropic scaling is identified.

Counterterms are shown to be local and marginal or relevant.

Abstract

We prove perturbative renormalizability of projectable Horava gravity. The key element of the argument is the choice of a gauge which ensures the correct anisotropic scaling of the propagators and their uniform falloff at large frequencies and momenta. This guarantees that the counterterms required to absorb the loop divergences are local and marginal or relevant with respect to the anisotropic scaling. Gauge invariance of the counterterms is achieved by making use of the background-covariant formalism. We also comment on the difficulties of this approach when addressing the renormalizability of the non-projectable model.