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The 1+3 covariant approach and the covariant gauge-invariant approach to perturbations are used to analyze in depth conformal transformations in cosmology. Such techniques allow us to obtain very interesting insights on the physical content…
Gravitational interferometers and cosmological observations of the cosmic microwave background offer us the prospect to probe the laws of gravity in the primordial universe. To study and interpret these datasets we need to know the possible…
We review the status of the Starobinsky-like models for inflation beyond minimal gravity and discuss the unitarity problem due to the presence of a large non-minimal gravity coupling. We show that the induced gravity models allow for a…
We investigate the scalar sector of linear cosmological perturbations in quadratic gravity. Working in the Einstein frame, we derive the equations of motion in a gauge-independent manner and express them in terms of three sets of…
The framework of the Covariant Canonical Gauge theory of Gravity (CCGG) is described in detail. CCGG emerges naturally in the Palatini formulation, where the vierbein and the spin connection are independent fields. Neither torsion nor…
We discuss four-dimensional "spatially homogeneous" gravitational instantons. These are self-dual solutions of Euclidean vacuum Einstein's equations with potentially non-vanishing cosmological constant. They are endowed with a product…
A generally covariant gauge theory for an arbitrary gauge group with dimension $\geq 3$, that reduces to Ashtekar's canonical formulation of gravity for SO(3,C), is presented. The canonical form of the theory is shown to contain only first…
In the first part of the thesis, and after an introduction to certain models of modified gravity, we study consistent Lagrangians for Lorentz invariant (massive and massless) spin-2 and spin-3/2 particles in flat space. The second part of…
We consider topological contributions to the action integral in a gauge theory formulation of gravity. Two topological invariants are found and are shown to arise from the scalar and pseudoscalar parts of a single integral. Neither of these…
In this paper we examine a small but detailed test of the emergent gravity picture with explicit solutions in gravity and gauge theory. We first derive symplectic U(1) gauge fields starting from the Eguchi-Hanson metric in four-dimensional…
A relation between the MacDowell-Mansouri theory of gravity and the Pontrjagin toplogical invariant in $(3+1)$ dimensions is discussed. This relation may be of especial interest in the quest of finding a mechanism to go from non-dynamical…
In this paper, we investigate a three-dimensional gravitational model known as Minimal Massive Gravity (MMG), which includes an auxiliary field, using the covariant phase space method. Our analysis reveals the presence of three gauge…
Einstein's General Relativity (GR) is a dynamical theory of the spacetime metric. We describe an approach in which GR becomes an SU(2) gauge theory. We start at the linearised level and show how a gauge theoretic Lagrangian for…
Gauging of space translations for nonrelativistic point particles in one dimension leads to general coordinate transformations with fixed Newtonian time. The minimal gauge invariant extension of the particle velocity requires the…
In the framework of mixed Higgs-Starobinsky inflation, we consider the generation of Abelian gauge fields due to their nonminimal coupling to gravity (in two different formulations of gravity -- metric and Palatini). We couple the…
We investigate several problems in relativity and particle physics where symmetries play a central role; in all cases geometric properties of Lie groups and their quotients are related to physical effects. The first part is concerned with…
We establish a Lagrangian variational framework for general relativistic continuum theories that permits the development of the process of Lagrangian reduction by symmetry in the relativistic context. Starting with a continuum version of…
Within the framework of geodetic brane gravity, the Universe is described as a 4-dimensional extended object evolving geodetically in a higher dimensional flat background. In this paper, by introducing a new pair of canonical fields…
This work presents instructive, yet comprehensive derivation of quantized gravity theories in relativistic, classical, and semi-classical spacetime structure based on the Poincar\'e, Galilean, and Bargmann algebra, respectively. The…
We give a brief introduction to matrix models and the group field theory (GFT) formalism as realizations of the idea of a third quantization of gravity, and present in some more detail the idea and basic features of a continuum third…