Massive gravity and Fierz-Pauli theory

Abstract

Linearized gravity is considered as an ordinary gauge field theory. This implies the need for gauge fixing in order to have well defined propagators. Only after having achieved this, the most general mass term is added. The aim of this paper is to study of the degrees of freedom of the gauge fixed theory of linearized gravity with mass term. The main result is that, even outside the usual Fierz-Pauli constraint on the mass term, it is possible to choose a gauge fixing belonging to the Landau class, which leads to a massive theory of gravity with the five degrees of freedom of a spin two massive particle.