Related papers: Fun in 2+1
The discovery of cosmic acceleration has raised the intriguing possibility that we are witnessing the first breakdown of General Relativity on cosmological scales. In this article I will briefly review current attempts to construct a…
Lecture notes on selected topics in the theory of gravitation.
We study systems in arbitrary space-time dimensions where matter, deformed by $\mathrm{T}\bar{\mathrm{T}}$-like irrelevant operators, is coupled to gravity in the Palatini formalism. The dynamically equivalent perspective is investigated,…
A relation between the MacDowell-Mansouri theory of gravity and the Pontrjagin toplogical invariant in $(3+1)$ dimensions is discussed. This relation may be of especial interest in the quest of finding a mechanism to go from non-dynamical…
During the last five decades, gravity, as one of the fundamental forces of nature, has been formulated as a gauge theory of the Weyl-Cartan-Yang-Mills type. The present text offers commentaries on the articles from the most prominent…
We comment on some peculiarities of matter with and without Weyl invariance coupled to classical $2d$ Einstein-Hilbert gravity for several models, in particular, related to the counting of degrees of freedom and on the dynamics. We find…
DGRAV News: DGRAV we hear that.... Research Briefs: GW150914 Obituaries: Remembering Felix Pirani Remembering David Finkelstein Steve, the physicist Remembering Sergio Dain Editorial: Gravitational physics in the modern university
The advent of general relativity settled it once and for all that a theory of spacetime is inextricably linked to the theory of gravity. From the point of view of the gauge principle of Weyl and Yang-Mills-Utiyama, it became manifest around…
We consider a new D=2 nonrelativistic classical mechanics model providing via the Noether theorem the (2+1)-Galilean symmetry algebra with two central charges: mass m and the coupling constant k of a Chern-Simons-like term. In this way we…
We review Extended Theories of Gravity in metric and Palatini formalism pointing out their cosmological and astrophysical application. The aim is to propose an alternative approach to solve the puzzles connected to dark components.
One hundred years ago this year attempts began to generalise general relativity with the ambition of incorporating electromagnetism alongside gravitation in a unified field theory. These developments led to gauge theories and models with…
In seeking to arrive at a theory of ``quantum gravity'', one faces several choices among alternative approaches. I list some of these ``forks in the road'' and offer reasons for taking one alternative over the other. In particular, I…
We present a spinfoam formulation of Lorentzian quantum General Relativity. The theory is based on a simple generalization of an Euclidean model defined in terms of a field theory over a group. The model is an extension of a recently…
In July/August last year, a group of 50 galactic astronomers convened at Dunk Island, Australia to celebrate Prof. Ken Freeman's 60th birthday. The overarching theme of the meeting reflected Ken's wish to understand ``the chain of events…
We generalise Wesson's procedure, whereby vacuum $(4+1)-$dimensional field equations give rise to $(3+1)-$dimensional equations with sources, to arbitrary dimensions. We then employ this generalisation to relate the usual…
This work presents instructive, yet comprehensive derivation of quantized gravity theories in relativistic, classical, and semi-classical spacetime structure based on the Poincar\'e, Galilean, and Bargmann algebra, respectively. The…
Grand Unification of all forces has been a well motivated paradigm for particle physics. This subject has been recently revisited in the context of string theory, leading to a geometric reformulation of the idea of unification of forces.…
These notes, based on the remarks made at the 23 Solvay Conference, collect several speculative ideas concerning gauge/ strings duality, de Sitter spaces, dimensionality and the cosmological constant.
We provide a rather extended introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, and the main ideas behind it. We present in some detail the GFT quantization of 3d Riemannian gravity, and discuss briefly the current status…
We reexamine and further develop different gravito-electromagnetic (GEM) analogies found in the literature, and clarify the connection between them. Special emphasis is placed in two exact physical analogies: the analogy based on inertial…