A short-distance extension of massive gravity

by David Pirtskhalava

Wednesday 24 Apr 2019, 11:30 → 13:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

Positing that the graviton has a tiny mass would naturally explain possible deviations from general relativity at cosmological scales, in particular providing a good candidate for describing dark energy. While a well-defined effective field theory at astrophysical and cosmological distances, an uncomfortable feature of massive gravity is that it becomes quantum-mechanically strongly coupled below a macroscopic distance scale of approximately 1000 km. I will discuss why it has been hard to find a “Higgs mechanism” for the theory below this scale and argue in favour of a particular short-distance completion, hinted by holography.