Stability and superluminality of spherical DBI Galileon solutions

2010/08/31 by Garrett Goon, Garrett L. Goon, Kurt Hinterbichler +1 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galilean #Galilean invariance #Generalization #Geometry #Invariant (physics) #Lorentz covariance #Lorentz transformation #Mathematical analysis #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Philosophy #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Space (punctuation) #Spacetime #Symmetry (geometry) #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.83.085015

published as Phys.Rev.D83:085015,2011 · 16 pages, 1 figure. Discussions added, version appearing in PRD

openalex publication_date 2011/04/12 · arxiv created 2011/04/14 · arxiv updated 2011/04/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) Galileons are a generalization of the Galileon terms, which extend the internal Galilean symmetry to an internal relativistic symmetry, and can also be thought of as generalizations of DBI which yield second order field equations. We show that, when considered as local modifications to gravity, such as in the Solar System, there exists a region of parameter space in which spherically symmetric static solutions exist and are stable. However, these solutions always exhibit superluminality, casting doubt on the existence of a standard Lorentz invariant UV completion.

Citations

• Enhanced Brane Tunneling and Instanton Wrinkles
• Causality and superluminal behavior in classical field theories: Applications tok-essence theories and modified-Newtonian-dynamics-like theories of gravity
• DBI and the Galileon reunited
• Enhancing the tensor-to-scalar ratio in simple inflation
• Generalized global defect solutions
• Brane dynamics from the Born-Infeld action
• Generalized Galileons: All scalar models whose curved background extensions maintain second-order field equations and stress tensors
• k-Essence, superluminal propagation, causality and emergent geometry
• Bi-galileon theory II: phenomenology
• Bi-galileon theory I: motivation and formulation
• Causality, Analyticity and an IR Obstruction to UV Completion
• The galileon as a local modification of gravity
• Covariant Galileon

Cited by

• DBI Galileons in the Einstein frame: Local gravity and cosmology