Related papers: Pure Connection Formulation, Twistors and the Chas…
Using Quillen's superconnection formalism we give a new "twisted" approach to the rational Gromov-Lawson-Rosenberg (GLR) conjecture on topological obstructions to the existence of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature on compact…
The Palatini formalism is developed for gravitational theories in flat geometries. We focus on two particularly interesting scenarios. First, we fix the connection to be metric compatible, but we follow a completely covariant approach by…
The purpose of this review is to describe in some detail the mathematical relationship between geometrodynamics and connection dynamics in the context of the classical theories of 2+1 and 3+1 gravity. I analyze the standard Einstein-Hilbert…
The "metric" structure of nonrelativistic spacetimes consists of a one-form (the absolute clock) whose kernel is endowed with a positive-definite metric. Contrarily to the relativistic case, the metric structure and the torsion do not…
A new variational approach for general relativity and modified theories of gravity is presented. In addition to the metric tensor, two independent affine connections enter the action as dynamical variables. In the matter action the…
We work on the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian formulations of the Palatini action. In the Lagrangian formulation, we find that we need to assume the metric compatibility and the torsion zero or to assume the tetrad compatibility to describe…
The possibility of using spin connection components as basic quantization variables of a conformal version of General Relativity is studied. The considered model contains gravitational degrees of freedom and a scalar dilaton field. The…
In this paper, following the constructions of N. R. O'Brian, J. H. Rawnsley and I. Vaisman, we define four almost Hermitian structures (up to conjugation) on the twistor space of a Hermitian surface by using canonical connections, including…
We develop a non-relativistic twistor theory, in which Newton--Cartan structures of Newtonian gravity correspond to complex three-manifolds with a four-parameter family of rational curves with normal bundle ${\mathcal O}\oplus{\mathcal…
The full non-linear structure of the action and transformation rules for $\W_N$-gravity coupled to matter are obtained from a non-linear truncation of those for $w_ \infty$ gravity. The geometry of the construction is discussed, and it is…
We shall here consider extended theories of gravitation in the metric-affine formalism with matter coupled directly to the connection. A sufficiently general procedure will be exhibited to solve the resulting field equation associated to…
A complete geometric unification of gravity and electromagnetism is proposed by considering two aspects of torsion: its relation to spin established in Einstein--Cartan theory and the possible interpretation of the torsion trace as the…
The inclusion of a flat metric tensor in gravitation permits the formulation of a gravitational stress-energy tensor and the formal derivation of general relativity from a linear theory in flat spacetime. Building on the works of Kraichnan…
The self-consistent matter coupling is found in a broad class of minimally modified gravity theories which was discovered recently. All constraints in the theories remain first class and thus a graviton has only 2 local degrees of freedom.…
We show in this paper that it is possible to formulate General Relativity in a phase space coordinatized by two $SO(3)$ connections. We analyze first the Husain-Kucha\v{r} model and find a two connection description for it. Introducing 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…
In this thesis we take Einstein theory in dimension four seriously, and explore the special aspects of gravity in this number of dimension. Among the many surprising features in dimension four, one of them is the possibility of `Chiral…
General Relativity (GR), with or without matter fields, admits a natural extension to a scale invariant theory that requires a dilaton. Here we show that the recently formulated massive GR, minimally coupled to matter, possesses a new…
This work revisits the notions of connection and curvature in generalized geometry, with emphasis on torsion-free generalized connections on a transitive Courant algebroid, compatible with a generalized metric. Non-exact Courant algebroids…
Connections compatible with degenerate metric structures are known to possess peculiar features: on the one hand, the compatibility conditions involve restrictions on the torsion; on the other hand, torsionfree compatible connections are…