Inequivalent Goldstone Hierarchies for Spontaneously Broken Spacetime Symmetries

Abstract

The coset construction is a powerful tool for building theories that non-linearly realize symmetries. We show that when the symmetry group is not semisimple and includes spacetime symmetries, different parametrizations of the coset space can prefer different Goldstones as essential or inessential, due to the group's Levi decomposition. This leads to inequivalent physics. In particular, we construct a theory of a scalar and vector Goldstones living in de Sitter spacetime and non-linearly realizing the Poincar\'e group. Either Goldstone can be seen as inessential and removed in favor of the other, but the theory is only healthy when both are kept dynamical. The corresponding coset space is the same, up to reparametrization, as that of a Minkowski brane embedded in a Minkowski bulk, but the two theories are inequivalent.