Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: A systematic study of a gravitational action possessing local conformal invariance is undertaken.The spontaneous breaking of the conformal symmetry induces general relativity as an effective long distance limit through the vacuum expectation value of an unphysical scalar field.The Ward identities of the br+ ken theory guarantee the stability of Minkowski spacetime or, equivalently, the vanishing of the cosmological constant to all orders in any consistent perturbation expansion.This result persists when the theory is coupled to the standard U( 1) x su(2) x s-U(3) model with its electroweak symmetry broken by radiative corrections.A particularly natural small parameter is the ratio of the gravitation-al degrees of freedom to the matter ones, l/N.In this perturbation expansion the theory is asymptotically free and renormalizable in a simple way.We show that this expansion predicts the spontaneous breaking of local conformal symmetry.Furthermore, all ghost degrees of freedom acquire gauge fixing dependent masses.
Author: Antoniadis, I.
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7034712896