Born-Infeld gravity with a massless graviton in four dimensions

Creative Commons License

Guellue I., Sisman T. C., TEKİN B.

PHYSICAL REVIEW D, vol.91, no.4, 2015 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 91 Issue: 4
  • Publication Date: 2015
  • Doi Number: 10.1103/physrevd.91.044007
  • Journal Name: PHYSICAL REVIEW D
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

We construct Born-Infeld (BI) type gravity theories which describe tree-level unitary (nonghost and nontachyonic) massless spin-2 modes around their maximally symmetric vacua in four dimensions. Building unitary BI actions around flat vacuum is straightforward, but this is a complicated task around (anti)-de Sitter backgrounds. In this work, we solve the issue and give details of constructing perturbatively viable determinantal BI theories. It is interesting that the Gauss-Bonnet combination, which is a total derivative in four dimensions, plays an important role in the construction of viable BI theories.