No Arabic abstract
We constrain theories of a massive spin-2 particle coupled to a massless spin-2 particle by demanding the absence of a time advance in eikonal scattering. This is an $S$-matrix consideration that leads to model-independent constraints on the cubic vertices present in the theory. Of the possible cubic vertices for the two spin-2 particles, the requirement of subluminality leaves a particular linear combination of cubic vertices of the Einstein--Hilbert type. Either the cubic vertices must appear in this combination or new physics must enter at a scale parametrically the same as the mass of the massive spin-2 field. These conclusions imply that there is a one-parameter family of ghost-free bimetric theories of gravity that are consistent with subluminal scattering. When both particles couple to additional matter, subluminality places additional constraints on the matter couplings. We additionally reproduce these constraints by considering classical scattering off of a shockwave background in the ghost-free bimetric theory.
We place model-independent constraints on theories of massive spin-2 particles by considering the positivity of the phase shift in eikonal scattering. The phase shift is an asymptotic $S$-matrix observable, related to the time delay/advance experienced by a particle during scattering. Demanding the absence of a time advance leads to constraints on the cubic vertices present in the theory. We find that, in theories with massive spin-2 particles, requiring no time advance means that either: (i) the cubic vertices must appear as a particular linear combination of the Einstein-Hilbert cubic vertex and an $h_{mu u}^3$ potential term or (ii) new degrees of freedom or strong coupling must enter at parametrically the mass of the massive spin-2 field. These conclusions have implications for a variety of situations. Applied to theories of large-$N$ QCD, this indicates that any spectrum with an isolated massive spin-2 at the bottom must have these particular cubic self-couplings. Applied to de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley massive gravity, the constraint is in accord with and generalizes previous results obtained from a shockwave calculation: of the two free dimensionless parameters in the theory there is a one parameter line consistent with a subluminal phase shift.
We consider scattering of massless higher-spin particles in the eikonal regime in four dimensions. By demanding the absence of asymptotic superluminality, corresponding to positivity of the eikonal phase, we place constraints on the possible cubic couplings which can appear in the theory. The cubic couplings come in two types: lower-derivative non-abelian vertices, and higher-derivative abelian vertices made out of gauge-invariant curvature tensors. We find that the abelian couplings between massless higher spins lead to an asymptotic time advance for certain choices of polarizations, indicating that these couplings should be absent unless new states come in at the scale suppressing the derivatives in these couplings. A subset of non-abelian cubic couplings are consistent with eikonal positivity, but are ruled out by consistency of the four-particle amplitude away from the eikonal limit. The eikonal constraints are therefore complementary to the four-particle test, ruling out even trivial cubic curvature couplings in any theory with a finite number of massless higher spins and no new physics at the scale suppressing derivatives in these vertices.
We provide a systematic and comprehensive derivation of the linearized dynamics of massive and partially massless spin-2 particles in a Schwarzschild (anti) de Sitter black hole background, in four and higher spacetime dimensions. In particular, we show how to obtain the quadratic actions for the propagating modes and recast the resulting equations of motion in a Schrodinger-like form. In the case of partially massless fields in Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetime, we study the isospectrality between modes of different parity. In particular, we prove isospectrality analytically for modes with multipole number $L=1$ in four spacetime dimensions, providing the explicit form of the underlying symmetry. We show that isospectrality between partially massless modes of different parity is broken in higher-dimensional Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes.
There are various no-go results forbidding self-interactions for a single partially massless spin-2 field. Given the photon-like structure of the linear partially massless field, it is natural to ask whether a multiplet of such fields can interact under an internal Yang-Mills like extension of the partially massless symmetry. We give two arguments that such a partially massless Yang-Mills theory does not exist. The first is that there is no Yang-Mills like non-abelian deformation of the partially massless symmetry, and the second is that cubic vertices with the appropriate structure constants do not exist.
We consider the scattering of massless particles coupled to an abelian gauge field in 2n-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Weinbergs soft photon theorem is recast as Ward identities for infinitely many new nontrivial symmetries of the massless QED S-matrix, with one such identity arising for each propagation direction of the soft photon. These symmetries are identified as large gauge transformations with angle-dependent gauge parameters that are constant along the null generators of null infinity. Almost all of the symmetries are spontaneously broken in the standard vacuum and the soft photons are the corresponding Goldstone bosons. Our result establishes a relationship between soft theorems and asymptotic symmetry groups in any even dimension.