Conformal classes of Brans-Dicke gravity

Abstract

A classification of Brans-Dicke theories of gravitation, based on the behaviour of the dimensionless gravitational coupling constant, is given. It is noted that the discussion takes place in the current literature, about which of the two distinguished conformal frames in which scalar-tensor theories of gravity can be formulated: the Jordan frame and the Einstein frame, is the physical one, may, in most cases, be meaningless for both frames may belong to the same conformal class. It is also noted that the Jordan frame formulation of Brans-Dicke gravity with ordinary matter nonminimally coupled, that is shown to be just the Jordan frame formulation of general relativity, is scale-invariant, unlike the situation with the Jordan frame representation of Brans-Dicke gravity with matter minimally coupled (the original formulation of Brans-Dicke theory), where the presence of nonzero mass ordinary matter breaks the scale-invariance of the theory.