Radiative Degrees of Freedom of Thomas-Whitehead (TW) Gravity

Juan Felipa Ariza Mejia; University of Iowa

Thomas-Whitehead Gravity is a projectively invariant model of gravity that incorporates additional fields D_{ab} and \Pi {abc} with the metric gab. These additional fields are connection components of a (d+1) dimensional manifold, the Thomas Cone, associated with the d dimensional spacetime manifold with metric g_{ab}. These fields Dab and Î abc are associated with the diffeomorphism invariance of paths, and might play a role in understanding dark matter and dark energy.

To elucidate the features of the theory, we'll examine the new fields in a Minkowski space background.  D_{ab} and \Pi {abc} are decomposed into irreducible representations that are integer spin fields. Some of these sectors are found to have tachyonic mass, but it will be shown that tachyonic fields don't present problems with acausality. We'll see how these fields at first glance have no impact on geodesic deviation, but when we consider approximate back reactions into the metric equations, non zero deviation is recovered. The antenna patterns for a LIGO like interferometer will be presented.

To participate in this seminar remotely via Zoom, go to https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/95316149275