Related papers: $Q$-curvature and gravity
A higher order theory of dilaton gravity is constructed as a generalization of the Einstein-Lovelock theory of pure gravity. Its Lagrangian contains terms with higher powers of the Riemann tensor and of the first two derivatives of the…
A classification of Brans-Dicke theories of gravitation, based on the behaviour of the dimensionless gravitational coupling constant, is given. It is noted that the discussion takes place in the current literature, about which of the two…
In this report we discuss three aspects: 1) Semiclassical gravity theory (SCG): 4 levels of theories describing the interaction of quantum matter with classical gravity; 2) Alternative Quantum Theories: Discerning those which are derivable…
In three dimensions, there exist modifications of Einstein's gravity akin to the topologically massive gravity that describe massive gravitons about maximally symmetric backgrounds. These theories are built on the three-dimensional version…
A procedure for obtaining correlation function densities and wavefunctionals for quantum gravity from the Donaldson polynomial invariants of topological quantum field theories, is given. We illustrate how our procedure may be applied to…
Gravitational instability in classical Jeans theory, General Relativity, and modified gravity is considered. The background density increase leads to a faster growth of perturbations in comparison with the standard theory. The transition to…
A new approach to gravitational gauge-invariant perturbation theory begins from the fourth-order Einstein-Ricci system, a hyperbolic formulation of gravity for arbitrary lapse and shift whose centerpiece is a wave equation for curvature. In…
A class of theories of gravitation that naturally incorporates preferred frames of reference is presented. The underlying space-time geometry consists of a partial parallelization of space-time and has properties of Riemann-Cartan as well…
We examine the variational and conformal structures of higher order theories of gravity which are derived from a metric-connection Lagrangian that is an arbitrary function of the curvature invariants. We show that the constrained first…
We present a new model of quantum gravity as a theory of random geometries given explicitly in terms of a multitrace matrix model. This is a generalization of the usual discretized random surfaces of 2D quantum gravity which works away from…
A new framework of loop quantization that assimilates conformal and scale invariance is constructed and is found to be applicable to a large class of physically important theories of gravity and gravity-matter systems. They include general…
The Maxwell extension of the conformal algebra is presented. With the help of gauging the Maxwell-conformal group, a conformally invariant theory of gravity is constructed. In contrast to the conventional conformally invariant actions, our…
The scalar-tensor theory of gravitation has been and still is one of the most widely discussed "alternative theories" to General Relativity (GR). Despite nearly half a century of its age, it continues to attract renewed interests of not…
We propose a new class of conformal higher spin gravities in three dimensions, which extends the one by Pope and Townsend. The main new feature is that there are infinitely many examples of the new theories with a finite number of higher…
We discuss locally Weyl (scale) covariant generalisation of quadratic curvature gravity theory in three dimensions using Riemann-Cartan-Weyl space-times. We show that this procedure of Weyl gauging yields a consistent generalisation for a…
We discuss the possibility of a class of gauge theories, in four Euclidean dimensions, to describe gravity at quantum level. The requirement is that, at low energies, these theories can be identified with gravity as a geometrodynamical…
The geometrical nature of gravity emerges from the universality dictated by the equivalence principle. In the usual formulation of General Relativity, the geometrisation of the gravitational interaction is performed in terms of the…
The starting point of this work is the original Einstein action, sometimes called the Gamma squared action. Continuing from our previous results, we study various modified theories of gravity following the Palatini approach. The metric and…
This is an introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, with emphasis on motivations and basic formalism, more than on recent results; we elaborate on the various ingredients, both conceptual and formal, of the…
Using the cosmological perturbation theory in terms of the delta-N formalism, we find the simple formulation of the evolution of the curvature perturbation in generalized gravity theories. Compared with the standard gravity theory, a…