English

8D conformal gravity with Einstein sector, and its relation to the Q-curvature

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-11-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Differential Geometry

Abstract

We first streamline the construction of the unique six-dimensional conformal gravity action found by L\"u, Pang and Pope, that admits Einstein metrics as solutions to the field equations. We then prove that there exists a unique eight-dimensional conformal gravity action that admits Einstein metrics as solutions to the field equations, and explicitly build the corresponding action. Finally, we relate these results to Branson's Q-curvature and the Fefferman-Graham obstruction tensor, to conclude that on every even-dimensional space there exists a unique -- up to boundary terms -- conformally-invariant gravity theory that is extremised by Einstein metrics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.01368,
  title  = {8D conformal gravity with Einstein sector, and its relation to the Q-curvature},
  author = {Nicolas Boulanger and Davide Rovere},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.01368},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

18+1 pages, no figure, 7 references added; clarifications and corrections in last section done