Aethereal Gravity
Abstract: Hints from quantum gravity suggest that a preferred frame may actually exist. One way to accommodate such a frame in general relativity without sacrificing diffeomorphism invariance is to couple the metric to a dynamical, time like, unit-norm vector field--the "aether". I will discuss properties and observational tests of a class of such theories, including post-Newtonian effects and radiation from binary pulsar systems.
Date: 06/12/2006 - 4:30 pm
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