General relativity and its modifications as effective field theories of $GL(4)$ breaking

Abstract: We discuss General Relativity and some of its modifications as effective field theories of the breaking of the affine general linear group using the coset approach and the Maurer-Cartan form. While the ultimate goal is to break the symmetry down to the Lorentz subgroup, we argue that there are three interesting breaking cascades in which the affine general linear group is first broken to a larger subgroup that contains the Lorentz group. In all cases, the breaking of translations always generates Goldstone modes that can be interpreted as metric degrees of freedom. We argue that the effective field theories that emerge as a result of the different breaking patterns are all dynamically equivalent at the lowest order of the derivative expansion, e.g., using Einstein-Hilbert-like actions, but can differ beyond the leading order.