Planck Scale from Broken Local Conformal Invariance in Weyl Geometry

Abstract: It is shown that in the quadratic gravity based on Weyl's conformal geometry, the Planck mass scale can be generated from quantum effects of the gravitational field and the Weyl gauge field via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism where a local scale symmetry, that is, conformal symmetry, is broken. At the same time, the Weyl gauge field acquires mass less than the Planck mass by absorbing the dilaton. The shape of the effective potential is almost flat owing to a gravitational character and high symmetries, so our model would provide an attractive model for the inflationary universe. We also present a toy model showing spontaneous symmetry breakdown of a scale symmetry by moving from the Jordan frame to the Einstein one, and point out its problem.