Massive Spin-2: Field-equations, Propagators, Massless-limit, and Perihelion Precessions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantization of massive and massless spin-2 particles, addressing the vDVZ-discontinuity and its implications for perihelion precession, finding that a model with an imaginary scalar ghost can align with observational data.

Contribution

It introduces a quantization approach for spin-2 particles and explores the perihelion precession implications of massive gravitons with ghost fields.

Findings

Massive graviton models with imaginary scalar ghosts can match Mercury's perihelion precession.

The vDVZ-discontinuity is analyzed within the tree-approximation framework.

Quantization of spin-2 particles is achieved using the auxiliary field method.

Abstract

This paper presents the quantization of massive and massless spin-2 particles, using the auxiliary field method. The issue, the so-called vDVZ-discontinuity, whether the perihelion precessions for a massive graviton are in agreement with the data, is studied in the context of this spin-2 theory in tree-approximation. In the context of this setting, it is found, that a massive gravitation model with an imaginary scalar ghost, for a small graviton mass is compatible with the perihelion-precession of Mercury, etc..