Gravitons as Goldstone Modes and the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking of Diffeomorphism Invariance

Abstract

We complement investigations of the gauge structure of general relativity with an analysis of the physical consequences of the spontaneous breaking of diffeomorphism invariance which manifests itself in e.g. the socalled Einstein hole problem. We analyze the nature of the gravitons as Goldstone excitations both in the classical and the quantum case. We show that the metrical field and the classical space-time manifold play the role of an order parameter field and order parameter manifold as macroscopic super structures living in an underlying presumed quantum space-time. We furthermore relate our observations to possible phase transitions in some pre big-bang era.