Published October 15, 2007 | Version v1
Journal article

Degravitation of the cosmological constant and graviton width

  • 1. Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003 (United States)
  • 2. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline St. N., Waterloo, ON, N2L 2Y5 (Canada)

Description

We study the possibility of decoupling gravity from the vacuum energy. This is effectively equivalent to promoting Newton's constant to a high-pass filter that degravitates sources of characteristic wavelength larger than a certain macroscopic (super) horizon scale L. We study the underlying physics and the consistency of this phenomenon. In particular, the absence of ghosts, already at the linear level, implies that in any such theory the graviton should either have a mass 1/L, or be a resonance of similar width. This has profound physical implications for the degravitation idea

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
76
Journal Issue
8
Journal Page Range
p. 084006-084006.22
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2007 The American Physical Society