Related papers: Generalized ghost-free quadratic curvature gravity
The field equations of general relativity can be derived from the Einstein action, which is quadratic in connection coefficients, rather than the standard action involving the Gibbons-Hawking-York term and counterterm. We show that it is…
In order to explore some general features of modified theories of gravity which involve higher derivatives and spontaneous Lorentz and/or diffeomorphism symmetry breaking, we study the recently proposed new version of covariant…
In this work we develop a theoretical framework for Gauss-Bonnet modified gravity theories, in which ghost modes can be eliminated at the equations of motion level. Particularly, after we present how the ghosts can occur at the level of…
We investigate the ghostfree scalar-tensor theory with a timelike scalar field, with derivatives of the scalar field up to the third order and with the Riemann tensor up to the quadratic order. We build two types of linear spaces. One is…
Modifications of Einstein's theory of gravitation have been extensively considered in the past years, in connection to both cosmology and quantum gravity. Higher-curvature and higher-derivative gravity theories constitute the main examples…
We study exact impulsive gravitational waves propagating in anti-de Sitter spacetime in the context of the ghost free infinite derivative gravity. We show that the source-free theory does not admit any AdS wave solutions other than that of…
In the recently introduced gauge theory of translations, dubbed Coincident General Relativity, gravity is described with neither torsion nor curvature in the spacetime affine geometry. The action of the theory enjoys an enhanced symmetry…
We construct invariant differential operators acting on sections of vector bundles of densities over a smooth manifold without using a Riemannian metric. The spectral invariants of such operators are invariant under both the diffeomorphisms…
We study the Gauss-Bonnet (GB) term as the leading higher-curvature correction to pure Einstein gravity. Assuming a tree-level ultraviolet completion free of ghosts or tachyons, we prove that the GB term has a nonnegative coefficient in…
Poincar\'e gauge theories provide an approach to gravity based on the gauging of the Poincar\'e group, whose homogeneous part generates curvature while the translational sector gives rise to torsion. In this note we revisit the stability of…
The effective action for gravity at high curvatures is likely to contain higher derivative terms. These corrections may have profound consequences for the singularity structure of space-time and for early Universe cosmology. In this…
The quadratic theory of gravity is the unique renormalizable theory of quantum gravity in 4 dimensions, as proved by K. S. Stelle in 1977. Over the decades, the theory has been understood to contain a massive tensor ghost, and several…
We study the gravitational field of ultrarelativistic spinning objects (gyratons) in a modified gravity theory with higher derivatives. In particular, we focus on a special class of such theories with an infinite number of derivatives known…
Quadratic gravity is a well-motivated extension of general relativity~(GR) wherein the Einstein-Hilbert action is augmented by quadratic curvature terms. This theory is equivalent to GR in an effective-field-theory framework, while the two…
We study several aspects of higher-order gravities constructed from general contractions of the Riemann tensor and the metric in arbitrary dimensions. First, we use the fast-linearization procedure presented in arXiv:1607.06463 to obtain…
We construct generalized symmetries for linearized Einstein gravity in arbitrary dimensions. First-principle considerations in QFT force generalized symmetries to appear in dual pairs. Verifying this prediction helps us find the full set of…
Understanding the role of higher derivatives is probably one of the most relevant questions in quantum gravity theory. Already at the semiclassical level, when gravity is a classical background for quantum matter fields, the action of…
We develop techniques of analyzing the unitarity of general Born-Infeld (BI) gravity actions in D-dimensional spacetimes. Determinantal form of the action allows us to find a compact expression quadratic in the metric fluctuations around…
We review recent progress in massive gravity. We start by showing how different theories of massive gravity emerge from a higher-dimensional theory of general relativity, leading to the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model, cascading gravity and…
Canonical methods allow the derivation of effective gravitational actions from the behavior of space-time deformations reflecting general covariance. With quantum effects, the deformations and correspondingly the effective actions change,…