Spin-spin Interactions in General Relativity versus Linearized Massive Gravity: $N$-body Simulations

TL;DR

This paper compares spin-spin interactions in linearized General Relativity and Massive Gravity through N-body simulations, revealing distinct behaviors in total spin evolution and orientation preferences at large distances.

Contribution

It provides the first N-body simulation comparison of spin interactions in linearized GR and massive gravity, highlighting differences in total spin dynamics.

Findings

In GR, total spin tends to decrease over time.

In massive gravity, total spin tends to increase at large distances.

Distinct spin orientation preferences are observed between the two theories.

Abstract

We simulated spin-spin interactions of $N$-bodies in linearized General Relativity (GR) and linearized Massive Gravity of the Fierz-Pauli type (mGR). It was noted earlier that there is a discrete difference between the spin-spin interaction potential in GR and mGR for a $2$-body system, akin to the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity in the static Newton's potential. Specifically, at large distances, GR favors anti-parallel spin orientation with total spin pointing along the interaction axis, while mGR favors parallel spin orientation with total spin perpendicular to the axis between the sources. For an $N$-body system, a simulation in mGR hitherto has not been done and one would like to know the total spin of the system in both theories. Here we remedy this. In the simulations of GR, we observed that the total spin tends to decrease from a random initial configuration, while for mGR with a large distance, the total spin increases.