Massive Yang-Mills Fields in Interaction with Gravity

Abstract

We determine the most general form of the interaction between the gravitational field and an arbitrary Yang-Mills system of fields (massless and massive). We work in the perturbative quantum framework of the causal approach (of Epstein and Glaser) and use a cohomological definition of gauge invariance for both gauge fields. We also consider the case of massive gravity. We discuss the question whether gravity couples to the unphysical degrees of freedom in the Yang-Mills fields.