English

Causality in 3D Massive Gravity Theories

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-05-16 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study the constraints coming from local causality requirement in various 2+12+1 dimensional dynamical theories of gravity. In topologically massive gravity, with a single parity non-invariant massive degree of freedom, and in new massive gravity, with two massive spin-22 degrees of freedom, causality and unitarity are compatible with each other and both require the Newton's constant to be negative. In their extensions, such as the Born-Infeld gravity and the minimal massive gravity the situation is similar and quite different from their higher dimensional counterparts, such as quadratic (e.g., Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet) or cubic theories, where causality and unitarity are in conflict. We study the problem both in asymptotically flat and asymptotically anti-de Sitter spaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.03376,
  title  = {Causality in 3D Massive Gravity Theories},
  author = {Jose D. Edelstein and Gaston Giribet and Carolina Gomez and Ercan Kilicarslan and Matias Leoni and Bayram Tekin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.03376},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

This version has significant improvements: causality discussion of all the well-known gravity theories in flat space is extended to the AdS space, references added, 29 pages, latest version matches the published one

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:47:36.295Z