Towards renormalizable gravity without negative-energy states.

Abstract

A second-derivative gauge theory with a massless spin-2 boson on flat spacetime is presented. The dynamical symmetry preserves the spacetime metric and follows from an alternative interpretation of the equivalence principle. Gauge ambiguity is eliminated by a choice of reference frame, and the gauge boson propagator is derived from an invariant four parameter polynomial action involving only dimensionless couplings. It is deduced that the theory is power-counting renormalizable in this gauge for almost all configurations of parameters. Examination of the linearized radiation then shows that, for some of these configurations, all excitations have non-negative canonical energy density. The paper concludes with an analysis of the static isotropic solutions to the weak-field vacuum equations.