Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Landau Phase Transition in Horava Gravity

Abstract

Presence of higher derivative terms in the Horava model of gravity can generate an instability in the Minkowski ground state. This in turn leads to a space dependent vacuum metric with a length scale determined by the higher derivative coupling coefficient. The translation invariance is spontaneously broken in the process. The phenomenon is interpreted as a form of Landau liquid-solid phase translation. The (metric) condensate acts as a source that modifies the Newtonian potential below the length scale but keeps it unchanged for sufficiently large distance.