TransverseDiff gravity is to scalar-tensor as unimodular gravity is to General Relativity

Abstract

Transverse Diffeomorphism (TDiff) theories are well-motivated theories of gravity from the quantum perspective, which are based upon a gauge symmetry principle. The main contribution of this work is to firmly establish a correspondence between TransverseDiff and the better-known scalar-tensor gravity --- in its more general form ---, a relation which is completely analogous to that between unimodular gravity and General Relativity. We then comment on observational aspects of TDiff. In connection with this proof, we derive a very general rule that determines under what conditions the procedure of fixing a gauge symmetry can be equivalently applied before the variational principle leading to the equations of motion, as opposed to the standard procedure, which takes place afterwards; this rule applies to gauge-fixing terms without derivatives.

10 pages; amsart style; v3: version as appeared in JCAP, redaction improved

References in corpus (5)

• Transverse Fierz-Pauli symmetry
• Unimodular cosmology and the weight of energy
• Ultraviolet behavior of transverse gravity
• Transverse gravity versus observations
• Unimodular metagravity vs. General Relativity with a scalar field

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• A class of ghost-free theories in symmetric teleparallel geometry
• Nonconservative unimodular gravity: a viable cosmological scenario
• The dimensional reduction of linearized spin-2 theories invariant under transverse diffeomorphisms
• Gravitational radiation from binary systems in Unimodular gravity
• K-nonizing
• Diffeomorphism Invariance Breaking in Gravity and Cosmological Evolution