Effects of Spontaneous Lorentz Violation in Gravity

Spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz symmetry occurs when a local vector or tensor field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value. The effects of such breaking are examined in the context of gravity theory. These include an associated spontaneous breaking of diffeomorphism symmetry and generation of massless Nambu-Goldstone modes. The possibility of a Higgs mechanism is examined as well, and it is found that the conventional Higgs mechanism (giving rise to massive gauge fields) does not occur in a Riemann spacetime. However, in a Riemann-Cartan spacetime a Higgs mechanism involving the spin connection is possible. Despite the lack of a conventional Higgs mechanism in Riemann spacetime, additional massive modes involving the metric can appear through unconventional processes that have no analogue in nonabelian gauge theory. The effects of these types of processes are illustrated using a specific model, known as a bumblebee model, in which a vector field acquires a vacuum value.