Stability of Massive Cosmological Gravitons
Abstract
Description
We analyze the physics of massive spin 2 fields in (A)dS backgrounds and exhibit that: The theory is stable only for masses m^2 >= 2Λ/3, where the conserved energy associated with the background timelike Killing vector is positive, while the instability for m^2<2Λ/3 is traceable to the helicity 0 energy. The stable, unitary, partially massless theory at m^2=2Λ/3 describes 4 propagating degrees of freedom, corresponding to helicities (+/-2,+/-1) but contains no 0 helicity excitation.
13 pages, LaTeX, version to appear in Phys. Lett. B
13 pages, LaTeX, version to appear in Phys. Lett. B