Related papers: Variational principle and 1-point functions in 3-d…
We study the thermodynamics of Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant subjected to conformal boundary conditions. Our focus is on comparing the series of subextensive terms to predictions from thermal effective field theory,…
It is common knowledge that the Einstein-Hilbert action does not furnish a well-posed variational principle. The usual solution to this problem is to add an extra boundary term to the action, called a counter-term, so that the variational…
We present a variational formulation of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory in flat spacetime, when the asymptotic value of the scalar field is not fixed. We obtain the boundary terms that make the variational principle well posed and then…
Variational formalism in the extended phase space for fields is applied to gravity. It is shown that the requirement of invariance under arbitrary local inertial frames implies a coupling of torsion to a 3-form of matter fields on the one…
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…
A key tenet of general relativity is the dynamical nature of space-time, ideally represented as an initial value problem. Here we explore the variational formulation of classical Einstein-Hilbert gravity as initial value problem by…
We calculate graviton n-point functions in an anti-de Sitter black brane background for effective gravity theories whose linearized equations of motion have at most two time derivatives. We compare the n-point functions in Einstein gravity…
In this paper we perform the Hamiltonian reduction of the action for three-dimensional Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant using the Chern-Simons formulation and Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) boundary conditions.…
We analyze 2+1-dimensional gravity in the framework of quantum gauge theory. We find that Einstein gravity has a trivial physical subspace which reflects the fact that the classical solution in empty space is flat. Therefore we study…
We consider three dimensional gravity with a positive cosmological constant and non- zero gravitational Chern-Simons term. This theory has inflating de Sitter solutions and local metric degrees of freedom. The Euclidean signature partition…
We compute the vacuum energy of three-dimensional asymptotically flat space based on a Chern-Simons formulation for the Poincare group. The equivalent action is nothing but the Einstein-Hilbert term in the bulk plus half of the…
A topological version of four-dimensional (Euclidean) Einstein gravity which we propose regards anti-self-dual 2-forms and an anti-self-dual part of the frame connections as fundamental fields. The theory describes the moduli spaces of…
We study stress tensor correlation functions in four-dimensional conformal field theories with large $N$ and a sparse spectrum. Theories in this class are expected to have local holographic duals, so effective field theory in anti-de Sitter…
We compute the energy of 2+1 Minkowski space from a covariant action principle. Using Ashtekar and Varadarajan's characterization of 2+1 asymptotic flatness, we first show that the 2+1 Einstein-Hilbert action with Gibbons-Hawking boundary…
We point out that aspects of quantum mechanics can be derived from the holographic principle, using only a perturbative limit of classical general relativity. In flat space, the covariant entropy bound reduces to the Bekenstein bound. The…
We find the conditions under which scale-invariant Einstein-Cartan gravity with scalar matter fields leads to an approximate conformal invariance of the flat space particle theory up to energies of the order of the Planck mass. In the…
We consider pure three-dimensional quantum gravity with a negative cosmological constant. The sum of known contributions to the partition function from classical geometries can be computed exactly, including quantum corrections. However,…
The Weiss variational principle in mechanics and classical field theory is a variational principle which allows displacements of the boundary. We review the Weiss variation in mechanics and classical field theory, and present a novel…
The Einstein's equivalence principle is formulated in terms of the accuracy of measurements and its dependence of the size of the area of measurement. It is shown that different refinements of the statement 'the spacetime is locally flat'…
We study gravitational theory in 1+2 spacetime dimensions which is determined by the Lagrangian constructed as a sum of the Einstein-Hilbert term plus the two (translational and rotational) gravitational Chern-Simons terms. When the…