We study the possibility of decoupling gravity from the vacuum energy. This is effectively equivalent to promoting Newton’s constant to a high-pass filter that degravitates sources of characteristic wavelength larger than a certain macroscopic (super) horizon scale $L$. We study the underlying physics and the consistency of this phenomenon. In particular, the absence of ghosts, already at the linear level, implies that in any such theory the graviton should either have a mass $1/L$, or be a resonance of similar width. This has profound physical implications for the degravitation idea.

• Received 25 March 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.76.084006