generalizes the linear Fierz-Pauli action without propagating ghost degrees of freedom and
contains only second order equations of motion. Its successful realization relies on a very
specific structure of a 2-parameter family interactions. Very soon after that Hassan and
Rosen have realized that this very specific structure of the interactions was automatically
fulfilled by writing the interactions in terms of a deformed determinant det (
1
+ β
n
ˆ
K) [22],
where the matrix
ˆ
K =
q
ˆg
−1
ˆ
f −
1
encodes the potential interactions of the graviton with the
square root structure. This deformed determinant on the other hand can be written in terms
of the symmetric polynomials of the matrix
ˆ
K. The determinant plays a very crucial role. An
equivalent description of the interactions in terms of the Stueckelberg fields requires that the
scalar Stueckelberg field π in zeroth order of metric fluctuations h
µν
= 0 must appear in the
action only in total derivative terms. Exactly the antisymmetry property of the Levi-Civita
tensors in the determinant det (δ
µν
+ ∂
µ
∂
ν
π) guarantees that. Furthermore, the theory of
massive gravity can be promoted to a theory of bigravity by invoking explicit dynamics for the
reference metric f [23]. The ghost-free interactions between the two metrics are still given by
the determinant det (
1
+
ˆ
K) with the difference that there is also an additional kinetic term
for the f metric. There is nothing special about one metric versus the other since the theory
is symmetric under the exchange of the two metrics. Therefore naively one could attempt
to couple both metrics to external matter fields even though there might be restrictions due
to the existence of ghost degrees of freedom [19–21, 24, 25, 40–42]. Another crucial point
is that massive gravity in a given limit reproduces a given important class of scalar-tensor
theories: the Galileon theory [26]. The Galileon interactions represent an interesting subclass
of Horndeski interactions [27] with shift and Galileon symmetry and they have only second
order equations of motion. The decoupling limit of massive gravity contains these interactions
automatically [18, 28]. Exactly as in massive gravity the Galileon interactions can also be
written in terms of a deformed determinant det (δ
µν
+ a∂
µ
∂
ν
π + b∂
µ
π∂
ν
π) [29]. As can be
seen, in all these theories, the interactions appear in a very specific form of a deformed
determinant, to which we will pay a specific attention when we construct our generalization
of the Born-Infeld gravity theory. In this work we will combine the Born-Infeld gravity with
the ideas of massive gravity and extend the Born-Infeld action to include all of the symmetric
polynomials.
By comparing the structures of the basic building blocks of Born-Infeld gravity and
the potential term in massive gravity, the Born-Infeld Lagrangian can be written either as
√
−g
p
det
ˆ
Ω [16] or as
√
−g det(
p
ˆ
Ω). The identification of the matrix
p
ˆ
Ω as the basic
element of the action and the fact that det
p
ˆ
Ω is nothing but the highest order elementary
symmetric invariant polynomial of this matrix motivates us to propose an extension involving
other invariant polynomials of
p
ˆ
Ω. After explaining in detail this construction 2, we derive
the field equations of the resulting theory 3. Then we concentrate in more detail on the specific
case of the minimal extension of the theory, which consists only of the first polynomial 4,
and consider different applications aimed at exploring the behavior of these new theories in
scenarios with cosmological singularities 4.4.
Throughout the paper, we use the metric signature convention (−, +, +, +) and units in
which the speed of light and the Planck constant are unity c = ~ = 1, and the reduced Planck
mass is M
2
Pl
= 1/
√
8πG. We follow the convention R
αβ
= ∂
µ
Γ
µ
βα
−∂
β
Γ
µ
µα
+ Γ
µ
µν
Γ
ν
βα
−Γ
µ
βν
Γ
ν
µα
for the Ricci tensor and T
α
µν
= Γ
α
[µν]
for the torsion. Some contractions of rank-2 tensors are
denoted by M
µ
µ
=[M]=Tr(M), M
µ
ν
M
ν
µ
=[M
2
]=Tr(M
2
), M
µ
α
M
α
β
M
β
µ
=[M
3
], and so on.
– 3 –