Bilocal fields and gravity

Abstract

We study a classical bilocal field theory perturbatively up to second order. The chosen theory is the simplest which incorporates action-at-a-distance, while keeping non-local effects short-ranged. We show that the new degrees of freedom introduced by bilocality can be interpreted as gravitational degrees of freedom in the following sense: solutions of the bilocal system at linear and second order contain as a subset, gravitational perturbations (spacetime fluctuations) also to that order. In other words, gravity can be thought to originate in a bilocal field theory. We examine potential implications.