Related papers: Developments in Topological Gravity
We investigate the space ${\cal M}$ of classical solutions to Witten's formulation of 2+1 gravity on the manifold ${\bf R} \times T^2$. ${\cal M}$ is connected, but neither Hausdorff nor a manifold. However, removing from ${\cal M}$ a set…
The possibility of the extension of spatial diffeomorphisms to a larger family of symmetries in a class of classical field theories is studied. The generator of the additional local symmetry contains a quadratic kinetic term and a potential…
A pedagogical but concise overview of Riemannian geometry is provided, in the context of usage in physics. The emphasis is on defining and visualizing concepts and relationships between them, as well as listing common confusions,…
We describe the geomety of a set of scalar fields coupled to gravity. We consider the formalism of a differential Z_2-graded algebra of $2\times 2$ matrices whose elements are differential forms on space-time. The connection and the…
In the framework of real 2-component spinors in three dimensional space-time we present a description of topologically massive gravity (TMG) in terms of differential forms with triad scalar coefficients. This is essentially a real version…
We consider marginally trapped surfaces in a spherically symmetric spacetime evolving due to the presence of a perfect fluid in D-dimensions and look at the various definitions of the surface gravity for these marginally trapped surfaces.…
These lecture notes are devoted to the theory of equations of associativity describing geometry of moduli spaces of 2D topological field theories. Introduction. Lecture 1. WDVV equations and Frobenius manifolds. {Appendix A.} Polynomial…
This paper discusses the somewhat unintuitive conjecture that many Lorentz-invariant many-particle models can be reinterpreted to satisfy the gtr field equations. It is shown that a careful remapping of coordinates yields a non-trivial…
Certain topological invariants of the moduli space of gravitational instantons are defined and studied. Several amplitudes of two and four dimensional topological gravity are computed. A notion of puncture in four dimensions, that is…
A seminar given about 30 years ago by Ruben Aldrovandi motivates this text where some reflexions about constructing theories that modify General Relativity are made. Two particular cases, the Brans-Dicke and Unimodular Gravity ones, are…
In the last century, theoretical and experimental developments have established the General Relativity theory as the most successful theory for describing the gravitational phenomenon. On the other hand, in the last two decades, multiple…
Despite remarkable success in describing supergravity reductions and backgrounds, generalized geometry and the closely related exceptional field theory are still lacking a fundamental object of differential geometry, the Riemann tensor. We…
A new approach to the model of the universe based on work by Rippl, Romero, Tavakol is presented. We have used the scheme for relating the vacuum (D + 1) dimensional theories to D dimensional theories for setting up a correspondence between…
We study a deSitter/Anti-deSitter/Poincare Yang-Mills theory of gravity in d-space-time dimensions in an attempt to retain the best features of both general relativity and Yang-Mills theory: quadratic curvature, dimensionless coupling and…
The study of 2-dimensional surfaces of constant curvature constitutes a beautiful branch of geometry with well-documented ties to the mathematical physics of integrable systems. A lesser known, but equally fascinating, fact is its…
We examine the role of consistency with causality and quantum mechanics in determining the properties of gravitation. We begin by examining two different classes of interacting theories of massless spin 2 particles -- gravitons. One…
Teleparallel gravity has significantly increased in popularity in recent decades, bringing attention to Einstein's other theory of gravity. In this Review, we relate this form of geometry to the broader metric-affine approach to forming…
We review, in the light of recent developments, the existing relations between gravity and topological BF theories at the classical level. We include the Plebanski action in both self-dual and non-chiral formulations, their generalizations,…
In (2+1)-dimensional general relativity, the path integral for a manifold $M$ can be expressed in terms of a topological invariant, the Ray-Singer torsion of a flat bundle over $M$. For some manifolds, this makes an explicit computation of…
We consider classical Teichmuller theory and the geodesic flow on the cotangent bundle of the Teichmuller space. We show that the corresponding orbits provide a canonical description of certain (2+1) gravity systems in which a set of…