Related papers: Characterization of the Lovelock gravity by Bianch…

Let (X, g) be an arbitrary pseudo-riemannian manifold. A celebrated result by Lovelock gives an explicit description of all second-order natural (0,2)-tensors on X, that satisfy the conditions of being symmetric and divergence-free. Apart…

A higher order theory of dilaton gravity is constructed as a generalization of the Einstein-Lovelock theory of pure gravity. Its Lagrangian contains terms with higher powers of the Riemann tensor and of the first two derivatives of the…

It is possible to define an analogue of the Riemann tensor for $N$th order Lovelock gravity, its characterizing property being that the trace of its Bianchi derivative yields the corresponding analogue of the Einstein tensor. Interestingly…

In the Riemann geometry, the metric's equation of motion for an arbitrary Lagrangian is succinctly expressed in term of the first variation of the action with respect to the Riemann tensor if the Riemann tensor were independent of the…

Within the framework of the Lovelock gravity theory, we propose a new rank-four divergenceless tensor consisting of the Riemann curvature tensor and inheriting its algebraic symmetry characters. Such a tensor can be adopted to define…

We show that the splitting feature of the Einstein tensor, as the first term of the Lovelock tensor, into two parts, namely the Ricci tensor and the term proportional to the curvature scalar, with the trace relation between them is a common…

Lanczos-Lovelock models of gravity represent a natural and elegant generalization of Einstein's theory of gravity to higher dimensions. They are characterized by the fact that the field equations only contain up to second derivatives of the…

We consider theories describing the dynamics of a four-dimensional metric, whose Lagrangian is diffeomorphism invariant and depends at most on second derivatives of the metric. Imposing degeneracy conditions we find a set of Lagrangians…

We present an alternative derivation of the gravitational field equations for Lovelock gravity starting from the Newton's law, which is closer in spirit to the thermodynamic description of gravity. As a warm up exercise, we have explicitly…

This paper deals with the problem of describing the vector spaces of divergence-free, natural tensors on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold that are second-order; i.e., that are defined using only second derivatives of the metric. The main result…

It is well known that the vacuum in the Einstein gravity, which is linear in the Riemann curvature, is trivial in the critical (2+1=3) dimension because vacuum solution is flat. It turns out that this is true in general for any odd critical…

In order to study the properties of Lovelock gravity theories in low dimensions, we define the kth-order Riemann-Lovelock tensor as a certain quantity having a total 4k-indices, which is kth-order in the Riemann curvature tensor and shares…

The Lanczos-Lovelock models of gravity constitute the most general theories of gravity in D dimensions which satisfy (a) the principle of of equivalence, (b) the principle of general co-variance, and (c) have field equations involving…

We derive conserved charges as quasi-local Hamiltonians by covariant phase space methods for a class of geometric Lagrangians that can be written in terms of the spin connection, the vielbein and possibly other tensorial form fields,…

We study some universal features of gravity in higher dimensions and by universal we mean a feature that remains true in all dimensions $\geq4$. They include: (a) the gravitational dynamics always follows from the Bianchi derivative of a…

In the continuum the Bianchi identity implies a relationship between different components of the curvature tensor, thus ensuring the internal consistency of the gravitational field equations. In this paper an exact form for the Bianchi…

The Riemann curvature tensor fully encodes local geometry, but its Ricci contraction retains only limited information: only the Ricci tensor and the scalar curvature survive, while the Weyl curvature vanishes identically. We show that…

A Palatini-type action for Einstein and Gauss-Bonnet gravity with non-trivial torsion is proposed. Three-form flux is incorporated via a deformation of the Riemann tensor, and consistency of the Palatini variational principle requires the…

Lovelock gravity is a class of higher-derivative gravitational theories whose linearized equations of motion have no more than two time derivatives. Here, it is shown that any Lovelock theory can be effectively described as Einstein gravity…

As a contribution towards the understanding for the field equations of diffeomorphism invariant theories of pure gravity, we demonstrate in great detail that the expression for the field equations of such theories can be derived within the…