Gravitational Properties of the Proca Field

Abstract

We study various properties of a Proca field coupled to gravity through minimal and quadrupole interactions, described by a two-parameter family of Lagrangians. Stückelberg decomposition of the effective theory spells out its model-dependent ultraviolet cutoff, parametrically larger than the Proca mass. We present pp-wave solutions that the model admits, consider linear fluctuations on such backgrounds, and thereby constrain the parameter space of the theory by requiring null-energy condition and the absence of negative time delays in high-energy scattering. We briefly discuss the positivity constraints$-$derived from unitarity and analyticity of scattering amplitudes$-$that become ineffective in this regard.

23 pages, revised positivity-bound analysis, references added

References in corpus (14)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Photon Masses in the Landscape and the Swampland
• A Universal Bound on the Strong Coupling Scale of a Gravitationally Coupled Massive Spin-2 Particle
• Swampland Conditions for Higher Derivative Couplings from CFT
• Closed Strings and Weak Gravity from Higher-Spin Causality
• Causality Constraints in Large $N$ QCD Coupled to Gravity
• Covariant Effective Action for Generalized Proca Theories
• Gravitating Meron-like topological solitons in massive Yang-Mills theory and the Einstein-Skyrme model
• Localization of $U(1)$ gauge field by non-minimal coupling with gravity