Transverse gravity versus observations

Abstract

Theories of gravity invariant under those diffeomorphisms generated by transverse vectors, $\pd_\mξ^\m=0$ are considered. Such theories are dubbed transverse, and differ from General Relativity in that the determinant of the metric, $g$, is a transverse scalar. We comment on diverse ways in which these models can be constrained using a variety of observations. Generically, an additional scalar degree of freedom mediates the interaction, so the usual constraints on scalar-tensor theories have to be imposed. If the purely gravitational part is Einstein--Hilbert but the matter action is transverse, the models predict that the three {\em a priori} different concepts of mass (gravitational active and gravitational passive as well as inertial) are not equivalent anymore. These transverse deviations from General Relativity are therefore tightly constrained, actually correlated with existing bounds on violations of the equivalence principle, local violations of Newton's third law and/or violation of Local Position Invariance.

21 pages. Title changed. New section on Newtonian limit

References in corpus (4)

• Transverse Fierz-Pauli symmetry
• Unimodular cosmology and the weight of energy
• Ultraviolet behavior of transverse gravity
• A comment on the matter-graviton coupling

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Scale-invariant alternatives to general relativity
• Cosmological Implications of Unimodular Gravity
• Model-independent test of the parity symmetry of gravity with gravitational waves
• Testing Unimodular Gravity
• Weyl transverse gravity (WTDiff) and the cosmological constant
• Unimodular bimode gravity and the coherent scalar-graviton field as galaxy dark matter
• Three form potential in (special) minimal supergravity superspace and supermembrane supercurrent
• A class of ghost-free theories in symmetric teleparallel geometry
• TransverseDiff gravity is to scalar-tensor as unimodular gravity is to General Relativity
• Analyzing modified unimodular gravity via Lagrange multipliers
• A unified TDiff invariant field theory for the dark sector
• Dark energy with a shift-symmetric scalar field: obstacles, loophole hunting and dead ends
• TDiff invariant gauge fields in cosmology
• Observational Constraints on Transverse Gravity: a Generalization of Unimodular Gravity