Vector-tensor theories in metric-affine geometry

TL;DR

This paper systematically constructs ghost-free vector-tensor theories within metric-affine geometry, highlighting the importance of projective invariance over torsionless conditions, and demonstrating the limitations of these symmetries alone for ghost-free formulations.

Contribution

It introduces methods to build ghost-free vector-tensor theories using projective invariance and compares their effectiveness to torsionless conditions in metric-affine geometry.

Findings

Projective invariance is more effective than torsionless conditions for ghost-free theories.

Imposing only projective invariance or torsionless conditions is insufficient for ghost-freedom.

Two approaches for constructing projective-invariant Lagrangians are demonstrated.

Abstract

We investigate ghost-free vector-tensor theories in metric-affine geometry. In all of our analysis, we start with the Lagrangian containing up to quadratic terms of first-order derivatives of a vector field. To obtain ghost-free vector-tensor theories efficiently, we consider two options; the theories satisfy the torsionless condition or have the projective symmetry. We first explore the vector-tensor theories under the former condition. We then investigate the projective-invariant vector-tensor theories in metric-affine geometry. To systematically construct a projective-invariant Lagrangian, we use two different approaches. First, we construct a Lagrangian by contracting the epsilon tensor. Second, we construct a Lagrangian by use of projective-invariant combinations. We find that to obtain a ghost-free Lagrangian in metric-affine geometry, imposing the projective invariance would be more useful than imposing the torsionless condition. However, we also prove that the projective invariance (or the torsionless condition) alone is insufficient for vector-tensor theories in metric-affine geometry to be ghost-free.