Einstein-aether waves

Abstract

Local Lorentz invariance violation can be realized by introducing extra tensor fields in the action that couple to matter. If the Lorentz violation is rotationally invariant in some frame, then it is characterized by an “aether,” i.e., a unit timelike vector field. General covariance requires that the aether field be dynamical. In this paper we study the linearized theory of such an aether coupled to gravity and find the speeds and polarizations of all the wave modes in terms of the four constants appearing in the most general action at second order in derivatives. We find that in addition to the usual two transverse traceless metric modes, there are three coupled aether-metric modes.