Related papers: Dimensionless physics
Deformations of spacelike hypersurfaces in space-time play an important role in discussions of general covariance and slicing independence in gravitational theories. In a canonical formulation, they provide the geometrical meaning of gauge…
We construct a unified covariant derivative that contains the sum of an affine connection and a Yang-Mills field. With it we construct a lagrangian that is invariant both under diffeomorphisms and Yang-Mills gauge transformations. We assume…
In gravitational theories with extra dimensions, it is argued that the existence of a positive vacuum energy generically implies catastrophic instability of our four-dimensional world. The most generic instability is a decompactification…
Noncommutative gravity in three dimensions with vanishing cosmological constant is examined. We find a solution which describes a spacetime in the presence of a torsional source. We estimate the phase shift for each partial wave of a scalar…
We study transformations of the dynamical fields - a metric, a flat affine connection and a scalar field - in scalar-teleparallel gravity theories. The theories we study belong either to the general teleparallel setting, where no further…
We consider a deformation of five-dimensional warped gravity with bulk and boundary mass terms to quadratic order in the action. We show that massless zero modes occur for special choices of the masses. The tensor zero mode is a smooth…
A number of recent proposals for a quantum theory of gravity are based on the idea that spacetime geometry and gravity are derivative concepts and only apply at an approximate level. There are two fundamental challenges to any such…
The gravitational effect of vacuum polarization in space exterior to a particle in (2+1)-dimensional Einstein theory is investigated. In the weak field limit this gravitational field corresponds to an inverse square law of gravitational…
A system of gravity coupled to a 2-form gauge field, a dilaton and Yang-Mills fields in $2n$ dimensions arises from the (2,1) sigma model or string. The field equations imply that the curvature with torsion and Yang-Mills field strength are…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
We consider various curious features of general relativity, and relativistic field theory, in two spacetime dimensions. In particular, we discuss: the vanishing of the Einstein tensor; the failure of an initial-value formulation for vacuum…
A classical two dimensional theory of gravity which has a number of interesting features (including a Newtonian limit, black holes and gravitational collapse) is quantized using conformal field theoretic techniques. The critical dimension…
Diffeomorphisms not connected to the identity can act nontrivially on the quantum state space for gravity. However, in stark contrast to the case of nonabelian Yang-Mills field theories, for which the quantum state space is always in 1…
We discuss two distinct realizations of the diffeomorphism group for metric gravity, which give rise to theories that are classically equivalent, but quantum mechanically distinct. We renormalize them in $d=2+\epsilon$ dimensions,…
Spacetime geometry is twisted (deformed) into noncommutative spacetime geometry, where functions and tensors are now star-multiplied. Consistently, spacetime diffeomorhisms are twisted into noncommutative diffeomorphisms. Their deformed Lie…
We hereby present a class of multidimensional higher derivative theories of gravity that realizes an ultraviolet completion of Einstein general relativity. This class is marked by a "non-polynomal" entire function (form factor), which…
According to some authors, gravity might be an emergent phenomenon in a fundamentally flat space-time. In this case the speed of light in the vacuum would not coincide exactly with the basic parameter "c" entering Lorentz transformations…
Proposals that quantum gravity gives rise to non-commutative spacetime geometry and deformations of Poincare symmetry are examined in the context of (2+1)-dimensional quantum gravity. The results are expressed in five lessons, which…
We consider metric-affine scenarios where a modified gravitational action is sourced by electrovacuum fields in a three dimensional space-time. Such scenarios are supported by the physics of crystalline structures with microscopic defects…
The gapless fermionic excitations in superfluid 3He-A have the "relativistic" spectrum close to the gap nodes. This allowed us to model the modern cosmological scenaria of baryogenesis and magnetogenesis. The same massless fermions induce…