English

Zwei-Dreibein Gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2013-12-18 v3

Abstract

We present a generally-covariant and parity-invariant "zwei-dreibein" action for gravity in three space-time dimensions that propagates two massive spin-2 modes, unitarily, and we use Hamiltonian methods to confirm the absence of unphysical degrees of freedom. We show how zwei-dreibein gravity unifies previous "3D massive gravity" models, and extends them, in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, to allow for a positive central charge consistent with bulk unitarity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1307.2774,
  title  = {Zwei-Dreibein Gravity},
  author = {Eric A. Bergshoeff and Sjoerd de Haan and Olaf Hohm and Wout Merbis and Paul K. Townsend},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.2774},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

5 pages, v2: refs. added, to appear in PRL, v3: addendum included to correct statement about absence of Boulware-Deser ghosts, and to show how this problem is solved by a restriction of parameters; main conclusion about compatibility of bulk and boundary unitarity is unaffected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:48:57.592Z