Mario Herrero-Valea

Renormalization of Hořava gravity

We prove perturbative renormalizability of projectable Horava gravity. The key element of the argument is the choice of a gauge which ensures the correct anisotropic scaling of the propagators and their uniform falloff at large frequencies and momenta. This guarantees that the counterterms required to absorb the loop divergences are local and marginal or relevant with respect to the anisotropic scaling. Gauge invariance of the counterterms is achieved by making use of the background-covariant formalism. We also comment on the difficulties of this approach when addressing the renormalizability of the nonprojectable model.

Quantum corrections to unimodular gravity

A bstractThe problem of the comological constant appears in a new light in Unimodular Gravity. In particular, the zero momentum piece of the potential (that is, the constant piece independent of the matter fields) does not automatically produce a cosmological constant proportional to it. The aim of this paper is to give some details on a calculation showing that quantum corrections do not renormalize the classical value of this observable.

Unimodular Gravity Redux

It is well known that the problem of the cosmological constant appears in a new light in unimodular gravity. In particular, the zero-momentum piece of the potential does not automatically produce a corresponding cosmological constant. Here we show that quantum corrections do not renormalize the classical value of this observable.

No Conformal Anomaly in Unimodular Gravity.

This work has been partially supported by the European Union FP7 ITN INVISIBLES (Marie Curie Actions, PITN- GA-2011- 289442) and (HPRN-CT-200- 00148) as well as by FPA2009-09017 (DGI del MCyT, Spain) and S2009ESP-1473 (CA Madrid). M. H. acknowledges a ‘‘Campus de Excelencia’’ grant from the Departamento de Fisica Teorica of the UAM. The authors acknowledge the support of the Spanish MINECO’s ‘‘Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa’’ Programme under Grant No. SEV-2012-0249

Unimodular gravity with external sources.

The only allowed source of the gravitational field in the unimodular theory, invariant under area-preserving (transverse) diffeomorphisms as well as Weyl transformations, is just the traceless piece of the energy-momentum tensor. This fact notwithstanding, the free energy produced by arbitrary sources (not only static ones) is identical to the one predicted by general relativity. This encompasses all weak field tests of gravitation.

arXiv : Horava gravity is asymptotically free (in 2+1 dimensions)

We compute the β functions of marginal couplings in projectable Hořava gravity in 2+1 spacetime dimensions. We show that the renormalization group flow has an asymptotically free fixed point in the ultraviolet (UV), establishing the theory as a UV-complete model with dynamical gravitational degrees of freedom. Therefore, this theory may serve as a toy model to study fundamental aspects of quantum gravity. Our results represent a step forward towards understanding the UV properties of realistic versions of Hořava gravity.

Conformal and non Conformal Dilaton Gravity

A bstractThe quantum dynamics of the gravitational field non-minimally coupled to an (also dynamical) scalar field is studied in the broken phase. For a particular value of the coupling the system is classically conformal, and can actually be understood as the group averaging of Einstein-Hilbert’s action under conformal transformations. Conformal invariance implies a simple Ward identity asserting that the trace of the equation of motion for the graviton is the equation of motion of the scalar field. We perform an explicit one-loop computation to show that the DeWitt effective action is not UV divergent on shell and to find that the Weyl symmetry Ward identity is preserved on shell at that level. We also discuss the fate of this Ward identity at the two-loop level — under the assumption that the two-loop UV divergent part of the effective action can be retrieved from the Goroff-Sagnotti counterterm — and show that its preservation in the renormalized theory requires the introduction of counterterms which exhibit a logarithmic dependence on the dilaton field.

Anomalies, equivalence and renormalization of cosmological frames

We study the question of whether two frames of a given physical theory are equivalent or not in the presence of quantum corrections. By using field theory arguments we claim that equivalence is broken in the presence of anomalous symmetries in one of the frames. This is particularized to the case of the relation between the Einstein and Jordan frames in scalar-tensor theories used to describe early Universe dynamics. Although in this case a regularization that cancels the anomaly exists, the renormalized theory always develop a non-vanishing contribution to the S-matrix that is present only in the Jordan frame, promoting the different frames to different physical theories that must be UV completed in a different way.

Some cosmological consequences of Weyl invariance

We examine some Weyl invariant cosmological models in the framework of generalized dilaton gravity, in which the action is made of a set of N conformally coupled scalar fields. It will be shown that when the FRW ansatz for the spacetime metric is assumed, the Ward identity for conformal invariance guarantees that the gravitational equations hold whenever the scalar fields EM do so. It follows that any scale factor can solve the theory provided a non-trivial profile for a dilaton field. In particular, accelerated expansion is a natural solution to the full set of equations.