Universe 2015, 1, 92-122; doi:10.3390/universe1020092 OPEN ACCESS universe ISSN 2218-1997 www.mdpi.com/journal/universe Article Higher Derivative Gravity and Conformal Gravity from Bimetric and Partially Massless Bimetric Theory Sayed Fawad Hassan 1;*, Angnis Schmidt-May 1;2 and Mikael von Strauss 1;3 1 Department of Physics & The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Centre, SE-106-91 Stockholm, Sweden; E-Mails:
[email protected] (A.S.-M.);
[email protected] (M.S.) 2 Institut für Theoretische Physik, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland 3 UPMC-CNRS, UMR7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, GReCO, 98bis boulevard Arago, F-75014 Paris, France * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]. Academic Editors: Kazuharu Bamba and Sergei D. Odintsov Received: 12 May 2015 / Accepted: 9 July 2015 / Published: 20 July 2015 Abstract: In this paper, we establish the correspondence between ghost-free bimetric theory and a class of higher derivative gravity actions, including conformal gravity and new massive gravity. We also characterize the relation between the respective equations of motion and classical solutions. We illustrate that, in this framework, the spin-2 ghost of higher derivative gravity at the linear level is an artifact of the truncation to a four-derivative theory. The analysis also gives a relation between the proposed partially massless (PM) bimetric theory and conformal gravity, showing, in particular, the equivalence of their equations of motion at the four-derivative level. For the PM bimetric theory, this provides further evidence for the existence of an extra gauge symmetry and the associated loss of a propagating mode away from de Sitter backgrounds.