dRGT theory of massive gravity from spontaneous symmetry breaking

TL;DR

This paper derives the dRGT massive gravity theory from a topological gauge theory framework, demonstrating spontaneous symmetry breaking that yields a consistent massive spin-2 particle without ghost modes.

Contribution

It introduces a topological gauge theory approach to derive the dRGT massive gravity, showing how spontaneous symmetry breaking produces a ghost-free massive graviton.

Findings

The theory has five propagating degrees of freedom, including a massive spin-2 and a healthy scalar.

The model avoids Boulware-Deser ghost modes.

The action can be obtained as a limit from a topological de Sitter gauge theory.

Abstract

In this note we propose a topological action for a Poincare times diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory. We show that there is Higgs phase where the gauge symmetry is spontaneous broken to a diagonal Lorentz subgroup and gives the Einstein-Hilbert action plus the dRGT potential terms. In this vacuum, there are five (three from Goldstone modes) propagating degrees of freedom which form polarizations of a massive spin 2 particle, an extra healthy heavy scalar (Higgs) mode and no Boulware-Deser ghost mode. We further show that the action can be derived in a limit from a topological de Sitter invariant gauge theory in 4 dimensions.