Related papers: Generalized Chern-Simons action principles for gra…

We compute the gravitational Chern-Simons term explicitly for an adiabatic family of metrics using standard methods in general relativity. We use the fact that our base three-manifold is a quasi-regular K-contact manifold heavily in this…

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 broad class of generalized Einstein's gravity can be cast into Einstein's gravity with a minimally coupled scalar field using suitable conformal rescaling of the metric. Using this conformal equivalence between the theories, we derive the…

Generalized geometry provides the framework for a systematic approach to non-symmetric metric gravity theory and naturally leads to an Einstein-Kalb-Ramond gravity theory with totally anti-symmetric contortion. The approach is related to…

A gauge invariant action principle, based on the idea of transgression forms, is proposed. The action extends the Chern-Simons form by the addition of a boundary term that makes the action gauge invariant (and not just quasi-invariant).…

In this PhD thesis, we investigate a wide class of three-dimensional massive gravity models and show how most of them (if not all) can be brought in a first-order, Chern-Simons-like, formulation. This allows for a general analysis of the…

We give a direct calculation of the curvature of the Hitchin connection, in geometric quantization on a symplectic manifold, using only differential geometric techniques. In particular, we establish that the curvature acts as a first-order…

We naturally extend the theory of gravity with a conformally coupled scalar field by only requiring conformal invariance of the scalar field equation of motion and not of the action. The classically extended theory incorporates a…

We derive the pure spin connection and constraint-free BF formulations of real four-dimensional Lorentzian vacuum General Relativity. In contrast to the existing complex formulations, an important advantage is that they do not require the…

It is shown that certain aspects of gravitation may be described using a relativistic action-at-a-distance formulation. The equations of motion of the model presented are invariant under Lorentz transformations and agree with the equations…

We use the Chern-Simons formulation of higher spin theories in three dimensions to study aspects of holographic W-gravity. Concepts which were useful in studies of pure bulk gravity theories, such as the Fefferman-Graham gauge and the…

Despite the nice geometrical properties of higher dimensional Chern-Simons (CS) supergravity theories these actions suffer from one major drawback, namely, their connection with the real world. After some quick remarks on three-dimensional…

We show that three-dimensional General Relativity, augmented with two vector fields, allows for a non-relativistic limit, different from the standard limit leading to Newtonian gravity, that results into a well-defined action which is of…

A simple cubic matrix model is presented, which has truncations that, it is argued, lead at the classical level to a variety of theories of gauge fields and gravity. These include Chern-Simons theory in d=3, and BF theory and general…

We present a Lorentzian version of three-dimensional noncommutative Einstein-AdS gravity by making use of the Chern-Simons formulation of pure gravity in 2+1 dimensions. The deformed action contains a real, symmetric metric and a real,…

Three dimensional Yang-Mills gauge theories in the presence of the Chern-Simons action are seen as being generated by the pure topological Chern-Simons term through nonlinear covariant redefinitions of the gauge field

Solar system observations have traditionally allowed for very stringent tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity. We here revisit the possibility of using these observations to constrain gravitational parity violation as…

After recalling the differential geometry of non-metric connections in the formalism of differential forms, we introduce the idea of a Non-Metricity (NM) connection, whose connection $1$--forms coincides with the non-metricity $1$--forms…

We examine the status of the Chern-Simons (or Kodama) state from the point of view of a formulation of gravity that uses only real connection and metric variables and a real action. We may package the {\it real} connection variables into…

We study Chern-Simons theory with a complex G_C or a real G x G gauge group on a manifold with boundary - this includes Lorentzian and Euclidean (anti-) de Sitter (E/A)dS gravity for G=SU(2) or G=SL(2,R). We show that there is a canonical…