English

Chiral Gravity in Three Dimensions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2010-04-06 v2

Abstract

Three dimensional Einstein gravity with negative cosmological constant -1/\ell^2 deformed by a gravitational Chern-Simons action with coefficient 1/\mu is studied in an asymptotically AdS_3 spacetime. It is argued to violate unitary or positivity for generic \mu due to negative-energy massive gravitons. However at the critical value \mu\ell=1, the massive gravitons disappear and BTZ black holes all have mass and angular momentum related by \ell M=J. The corresponding chiral quantum theory of gravity is conjectured to exist and be dual to a purely right-moving boundary CFT with central charges (c_L,c_R)=(0,3\ell /G).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0801.4566,
  title  = {Chiral Gravity in Three Dimensions},
  author = {Wei Li and Wei Song and Andrew Strominger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.4566},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

21 pages, published version, typos corrected, more reference added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:07:40.331Z