Related papers: Instabilities in Metric-Affine Theories of Gravity
We disprove the widespread belief that higher order curvature theories of gravity in the metric-affine formalism are generally ghost-free. This is clarified by considering a sub-class of theories constructed only with the Ricci tensor and…
In this PhD thesis we deal with several theoretical and phenomenological apsects of metric-affine theories of gravity. Concretely, we first give a broad introduction to the necessary tools to understand the framework and elaborate on some…
We study a metric cubic gravity theory considering odd-parity modes of linear inhomogeneous perturbations on a spatially homogeneous Bianchi type I manifold close to the isotropic de Sitter spacetime. We show that in the regime of small…
We reveal the existence of a certain hidden symmetry in general ghost-free scalar-tensor theories which can only be seen when generalizing the geometry of the spacetime from Riemannian. For this purpose, we study scalar-tensor theories in…
We study a large family of metric-affine theories with a projective symmetry, including non-minimally coupled matter fields which respect this invariance. The symmetry is straightforwardly realised by imposing that the connection only…
We analyse the stability issue of the vector and axial modes of the torsion and nonmetricity tensors around general backgrounds in the framework of cubic Metric-Affine Gravity. We show that the presence of cubic order invariants defined…
Like general relativity, metric-affine gravity should be a viable effective quantum theory, otherwise it is a mathematical curiosity without physical application. Assuming a perturbative quantum field theory, the universal, flat limit of…
Conformal transformations play a widespread role in gravity theories in regard to their cosmological and other implications. In the pure metric theory of gravity, conformal transformations change the frame to a new one wherein one obtains a…
We formulate cosmological perturbation theory around the spatially curved FLRW background in the context of metric-affine gauge theory of gravity which includes torsion and nonmetricity. Performing scalar-vector-tensor decomposition of the…
Bimetric gravity, is a theory of gravity that posits the existence of two interacting and dynamical metric tensors. The spectrum of bimetric gravity consists of a massless and a massive spin-2 particle. The form of the interactions between…
Motivated by the apparent dependence of string $\sigma$--models on the sum of spacetime metric and antisymmetric tensor fields, we reconsider gravity theories constructed from a nonsymmetric metric. We first show that all such "geometrical"…
We study the stability of theories where the gravitational action has arbitrary algebraic dependence on the three first traces of the Riemann tensor: the Ricci tensor, the co-Ricci tensor, and the homothetic curvature tensor. We…
Understanding the role of higher derivatives is probably one of the most relevant questions in quantum gravity theory. Already at the semiclassical level, when gravity is a classical background for quantum matter fields, the action of…
The intriguing choice to treat alternative theories of gravity by means of the Palatini approach, namely elevating the affine connection to the role of independent variable, contains the seed of some interesting (usually under-explored)…
Ghost-free bimetric theory can describe gravity in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. We study certain aspects of dynamics in this theory: (1) It is shown that if either of the metrics is an Einstein solution then the other is always…
We construct the spin-projection operators for a theory containing a symmetric two-index tensor and a general three-index tensor. We then use them to analyse, at linearized level, the most general action for a metric-affine theory of…
We report the existence of a ghost- and tachyon-free sector in metric-affine theories of gravity, that is invariant under diffeomorphism and a particular abelian symmetry. In contrast with many studied cases in the literature, the…
This work provides a short but comprehensible overview of some relevant aspects of metric-affine theories of gravity in relation to the physics and astrophysics of compact objects. We shall highlight the pertinence of this approach to…
We study new classes of metric transformations in the context of scalar-tensor theories, which involve both higher derivatives of the scalar field and derivatives of the metric itself. In general, such transformations are not invertible as…
We perform a thorough study of the theoretical consistency of recently proposed, viable, quadratic modifications of gravity that are functions of the the Gauss-Bonnet invariant, regarding the stability of their perturbations around vacuum,…