On Consistent Kinetic and Derivative Interactions for Gravitons

Abstract

The only known fully ghost-free and consistent Lorentz-invariant kinetic term for a graviton (or indeed for any spin-2 field) is the Einstein-Hilbert term. Here we propose and investigate a new family of candidate kinetic interactions and their extensions to derivative interactions involving several spin-2 fields. These new terms generically break diffeomorphism invariance(s) and as a result can lead to the propagation of 5 degrees of freedom for a single spin-2 field - analogous to ghost-free Massive Gravity. We discuss under what circumstances these new terms can be used to build healthy effective field theories and in the process establish the `Jordan' and `Einstein' frame pictures for Massive-, Bi- and Multi-Gravity.