Perturbations for massive gravity theories

Abstract

A theory of massive gravity depends on a non-dynamical 'reference metric' f_{\mu\nu} which is often taken to be the flat Minkowski metric. In this paper we examine the theory of perturbations on a background with metric g_{\mu\nu} which does not coincide with the reference metric f_{\mu\nu}. We derive the mass term for general perturbations on this background and show that it generically is not of the form of the Fierz-Pauli mass term. We explicitly compute it for some cosmological situations.