Turning on gravity with the Higgs mechanism
  We investigate how a Higgs mechanism could be responsible for the emergence
of gravity in extensions of Einstein theory. In this scenario, at high
energies, symmetry restoration could "turn off" gravity, with dramatic
implications for cosmology and quantum gravity. The sense in which gravity is
muted depends on the details of the implementation. In the most extreme case
gravity's dynamical degrees of freedom would only be unleashed after the Higgs
field acquires a non-trivial vacuum expectation value, with gravity reduced to
a topological field theory in the symmetric phase. We might also identify the
Higgs and the Brans-Dicke fields in such a way that in the unbroken phase
Newton's constant vanishes, decoupling matter and gravity. We discuss the broad
implications of these scenarios.
