Related papers: A Boundary Term for the Gravitational Action with …
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…
A generalization to the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term for metric $f(R)$ gravity theories is introduced. A redefinition of the Gibbons-Hawking-York term is proposed. The proposed new definition is used to derive a consistent set of…
The Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian has no well-defined variational derivative with respect to the metric. This issue has to be tackled by adding a suitable surface term to the action, which is a peculiar feature of gravity. We also know that…
The main goal of this paper is to get in a straightforward form the field equations in metric f(R) gravity, using elementary variational principles and adding a boundary term in the action, instead of the usual treatment in an equivalent…
We discuss the criteria that must be satisfied by a well-posed variational principle. We clarify the role of Gibbons-Hawking-York type boundary terms in the actions of higher derivative models of gravity, such as F(R) gravity, and argue…
It is well-known that the presence of a spacetime boundary requires the conventional Einstein-Hilbert (EH) action to be supplemented by the Gibbons-Hawking (GH) boundary term in order to retain the standard variational procedure. When the…
In this paper, we analyze the variation of the gravitational action on a bounded region of spacetime whose boundary contains segments with various characters, including null. We develop a systematic approach to decompose the derivative of…
Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) terms are typically neglected when performing dimensional reductions of gravitational theories. We consider the reduction of such terms for both two-derivative and four-derivative theories in general dimensions.…
The Einstein-Hilbert action for general relativity is not well posed in terms of the metric $g_{ab}$ as a dynamical variable. There have been many proposals to obtain an well posed action principle for general relativity, e.g., addition of…
A well-defined variational principle for gravitational actions typically requires to cancel boundary terms produced by the variation of the bulk action with a suitable set of boundary counterterms. This can be achieved by carefully…
Motivated by establishing holographic renormalization for gravitational theories with non-metricity and torsion, we present a new and efficient general method for calculating Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) terms. Our method consists of…
The Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) boundary term makes the Dirichlet problem for gravity well defined, but no such general term seems to be known for Neumann boundary conditions. In this paper, we view Neumann {\em not} as fixing the normal…
Using the method of images we derive the boundary term of the Einstein-$\Gamma^2$ action in half-space from the spherical worldsheet to first order in $\alpha'$ and to linear order in the metric perturbation around flat half-space. The…
Einstein's vierbein formulation of general relativity based on the notion of distant parallelism (teleparallelism) naturally introduces a covariant surface term in addition to the Einstein-Hilbert action. We investigate the action principle…
In the derivation of the Einstein field equations via Hamilton's principle, the inclusion of a boundary term is essential to render the variational problem well-posed, as it addresses variations that do not vanish at the boundary of the…
A variational principle is constructed for gravity coupled to an asymptotically linear dilaton and a p-form field strength. This requires the introduction of appropriate surface terms -- also known as `boundary counterterms' -- in the…
The recently proposed technique to regularize the divergences of the gravitational action on non-compact space by adding boundary counterterms is studied. We propose prescription for constructing the boundary counterterms which are…
A consistent variational procedure applied to the gravitational action requires according to Gibbons and Hawking a certain balance between the volume and boundary parts of the action. We consider the problem of preserving this balance in…
General relativity (GR) as described in terms of curvature by the Einstein-Hilbert action is dynamically equivalent to theories of gravity formulated in terms of spacetime torsion or non-metricity. This forms what is called the geometrical…
Varying the gravitational Lagrangian produces a boundary contribution that has various physical applications. It determines the right boundary terms to be added to the action once boundary conditions are specified, and defines the…