Extending the symmetry of the massless Klein-Gordon equation under the general disformal transformation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the symmetry properties of the massless Klein-Gordon equation under a broad class of disformal transformations, extending known symmetries and analyzing conditions for invertibility to ensure physical consistency.

Contribution

It extends the symmetry of the massless Klein-Gordon equation to general disformal transformations and derives conditions for their invertibility to maintain physical degrees of freedom.

Findings

Symmetry of the Klein-Gordon equation can be extended under general disformal transformations with specific form conditions.

The inverse of the general disformal transformation is derived, with restrictions to avoid non-physical degrees of freedom.

Conditions for the disformal factors to preserve symmetry and invertibility are identified.

Abstract

The Klein-Gordon equation, one of the most fundamental equations in field theory, is known to be not invariant under conformal transformation. However, its massless limit exhibits symmetry under Bekenstein's disformal transformation, subject to some conditions on the disformal part of the metric variation. In this study, we explore the symmetry of the Klein-Gordon equation under the general disformal transformation encompassing that of Bekenstein and a hierarchy of `sub-generalisations' explored in the literature (within the context of inflationary cosmology and scalar-tensor theories). We find that the symmetry in the massless limit can be extended under this generalisation provided that the disformal factors takes a special form in relation to the conformal factor. Upon settling the effective extension of symmetry, we investigate the invertibility of the general disformal transformation to avoid propagating non-physical degrees of freedom upon changing the metric. We derive the inverse transformation and the accompanying restrictions that make this inverse possible.