English

Is the gravitational action additive?

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-10-22 v2

Abstract

The gravitational action is not always additive in the usual sense. We provide a general prescription for the change in action that results when different portions of the boundary of a spacetime are topologically identified. We discuss possible implications for the superposition law of quantum gravity. We present a definition of `generalized additivity' which does hold for arbitrary spacetime composition.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9403018,
  title  = {Is the gravitational action additive?},
  author = {Dieter Brill and Geoff Hayward},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9403018},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

20 pages LaTeX file, report numbers UMD-PP 94-100 and Alberta Thy 10-94

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:48:55.089Z