Gravitational Higgs Mechanism with a Topological Term

Abstract

We investigate the Higgs mechanism for gravity, which has been recently put forward by 't Hooft, when the Polyakov-type action for scalar fields is added to the original action. We find that from the Polyakov-type action, it is very natural to derive an 'alternative' metric tensor composed of the scalar fields. The positivity condition on the determinant can be also derived easily by requiring that this term does not change the dynamics at all and becomes a topological number, that is, the wrapping number. It turns out that the gauge conditions adopted by 't Hooft are nothing but the restriction on a sector with unit wrapping number.