Lorentz violation in the linearized gravity

Lorentz invariance belongs to the fundamental symmetries of nature. It is basic for the successful Standard Model of Particle Physics. Nevertheless, within the last decades, Lorentz invariance has been repeatedly questioned. In fact, there exist different research programs addressing this problem. We argue that a most adequate understanding of a possible violation of Lorentz invariance is achieved in the framework of the gauge-theoretic approach to gravity: a non-vanishing no...

A number of different approaches to quantum gravity are at least partly phenomenologically characterized by their treatment of Lorentz symmetry, in particular whether the symmetry is exact or modified/broken at the smallest scales. For example, string theory generally preserves Lorentz symmetry while analog gravity and Lifshitz models break it at microscopic scales. In models with broken Lorentz symmetry there are a vast number of constraints on departures from Lorentz invari...

Gravitational theories with Lorentz violation must account for a number of possible features in order to be consistent theoretically and phenomenologically. A brief summary of these features is given here. They include evasion of a no-go theorem, connections between spontaneous Lorentz breaking and diffeomorphism breaking, the appearance of massless Nambu-Goldstone modes and massive Higgs modes, and the possibility of a Higgs mechanism in gravity.

This brief contribution is devoted to phenomenological consequences of deviations from Lorentz invariance in gravity and dark matter. We will discuss main effects on cosmological observables and current constraints derived from astrophysical and cosmological data.

We consider a theory of gravity in which a symmetric two-index tensor in Minkowski spacetime acquires a vacuum expectation value (vev) via a potential, thereby breaking Lorentz invariance spontaneously. When the vev breaks all the generators of the Lorentz group, six Goldstone modes emerge, two linear combinations of which have properties that are identical to those of the graviton in general relativity. Integrating out massive modes yields an infinite number of Lorentz-viola...

The Newton limit of gravity is studied in the presence of Lorentz-violating gravitational operators of arbitrary mass dimension. The linearized modified Einstein equations are obtained and the perturbative solutions are constructed and characterized. We develop a formalism for data analysis in laboratory experiments testing gravity at short range and demonstrate that these tests provide unique sensitivity to deviations from local Lorentz invariance.

In models of modified gravity, extra degrees of freedom usually appear. They must be removed from the spectrum because they may indicate the presence of instabilities and because otherwise the model might not agree with observation. In the present letter, we will discuss a model that modifies General Relativity through the addition of a Lorentz-violating potential-like term for the metric. No additional propagating modes and no classical instabilities are present. The model d...

We describe a scheme for the exploration of quantum gravity phenomenology focussing on effects that could be thought as arising from a fundamental granularity of space-time. In contrast with the simplest assumptions, such granularity is assumed to respect Lorentz Invariance but is otherwise left unspecified. The proposal is fully observer covariant, it involves non-trivial couplings of curvature to matter fields and leads to a well defined phenomenology. We present the effect...

The study of gravitational theories without Lorentz invariance plays an important role to understand different aspects of gravitation. In this short contribution we will describe the construction, main advantages and some phenomenological considerations associated with the presence of a preferred time direction.

Present models describing the interaction of quantum Maxwell and gravitational fields predict a breakdown of Lorentz invariance and a non standard dispersion relation in the semiclassical approximation. Comparison with observational data however, does not support their predictions. In this work we introduce a different set of ab initio assumptions in the canonical approach, namely that the homogeneous Maxwell equations are valid in the semiclassical approximation, and find th...