Disformal transformations in modified teleparallel gravity (1912.04604v2)

Abstract: In this work, we explore disformal transformations in the context of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity and modified teleparallel gravity. We present explicit formulas in components for disformal transformations of the main geometric objects in these theories such as torsion tensor, torsion vector and contortion. Most importantly, we consider the boundary term which distinguishes the torsion scalar from the Ricci scalar. With that we show for $f(T)$ gravity that disformal transformations from the Jordan frame representation are unable to straightforwardly remove local Lorentz breaking terms that characterize it. However, we have shown that disformal transformations have interesting properties, which can be useful for future applications in scalar-torsion gravity models, among others.