The special Galileon as Goldstone of diffeomorphisms

Abstract

Abstract The special Galileon stands out amongst scalar field theories due to its soft limits, non-linear symmetries and scattering amplitudes. This prompts the question what the origin of its underlying symmetry is. We show that it is intimately connected to general relativity: the special Galileon is the Goldstone mode of the affine group, consisting of linear coordinate transformations, analogous to the dilaton for conformal symmetries. We construct the corresponding metric, and discuss various relations to gravity, Yang-Mills and the non-linear sigma-model.