On sufficient conditions for degrees of freedom counting of multi-field generalised Proca theories

TL;DR

This paper establishes sufficient conditions for multi-field generalized Proca theories to have the correct degrees of freedom, refining previous constraints and impacting the interpretation of certain theories in cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a refined set of conditions ensuring the proper constraint structure for multi-field generalized Proca theories, including new criteria for the termination of constraint analysis.

Findings

Refined secondary-constraint enforcing relations.

Identification of theories previously considered undesirable as legitimate.

Implications for cosmological models based on these theories.

Abstract

We derive sufficient conditions for theories consisting of multiple vector fields, which could also couple to external fields, to be multi-field generalised Proca theories. The conditions are derived by demanding that the theories have the required structure of constraints, giving the correct number of degrees of freedom. The Faddeev-Jackiw constraint analysis is used and is cross-checked by Lagrangian constraint analysis. To ensure the theory is constraint, we impose a standard special form of Hessian matrix. The derivation benefits from the realisation that the theories are diffeomorphism invariance (or, in the case of flat spacetime, invariant under Lorentz isometry). The sufficient conditions obtained include a refinement of secondary-constraint enforcing relations derived previously in literature, as well as a condition which ensures that the iteration process of constraint analysis terminates. Some examples of theories are analysed to show whether they satisfy the sufficient conditions. Most notably, due to the obtained refinement on some of the conditions, some theories which are previously interpreted as being undesirable are in fact legitimate, and vice versa. This in turn affects the previous interpretations of cosmological implications which should later be reinvestigated.