Related papers: Bootstrapping gravity and its extension to metric-…
It is generally believed that coupling the graviton (a classical Fierz-Pauli massless spin-2 field) to its own energy-momentum tensor successfully recreates the dynamics of the Einstein field equations order by order; however the validity…
This thesis covers several developments performed in metric-affine gravity. This alternative framework extends General Relativity by considering a more general connection than the one induced by the metric (i.e., arbitrary torsion and…
We investigate a class of theories involving a symmetric two-tensor field in Minkowski spacetime with a potential triggering spontaneous violation of Lorentz symmetry. The resulting massless Nambu-Goldstone modes are shown to obey the…
We study f(R,T) theories of gravity, where T is the trace of the energy-momentum tensor T_{\mu\nu}, with independent metric and affine connection (metric-affine theories). We find that the resulting field equations share a close resemblance…
Previously, we have developed a general method to construct invariant conserved currents and charges in gravitational theories with Lagrangians that are invariant under spacetime diffeomorphisms and local Lorentz transformations. This…
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)…
Metric-affine theories of gravity provide an interesting alternative to General Relativity: in such an approach, the metric and the affine (not necessarily symmetric) connection are independent quantities. Furthermore, the action should…
Viewing gravitational energy-momentum as equal by observation, but different in essence from inertial energy-momentum naturally leads to the gauge theory of volume-preserving diffeormorphisms of an inner Minkowski space which can describe…
We extend a previous self-tuning analysis of the most general scalar-tensor theory of gravity in four dimensions with second order field equations by considering a generalized coupling to the matter sector. Through allowing a disformal…
In this manuscript, a conformally invariant theory of gravitation in the context of metric measure space is studied. The proposed action is invariant under both diffeomorphism and conformal transformations. Using the variational method, a…
We classify the metric-affine theories of gravitation, in which the metric and the connections are treated as independent variables, by use of several constraints on the connections. Assuming the Einstein-Hilbert action, we find that the…
This thesis studies modified theories of gravity from a geometric viewpoint. We review the motivations for considering alternatives to General Relativity and cover the mathematical foundations of gravitational theories in Riemannian and…
We revisit the generalized connection of Double Field Theory. We implement a procedure that allow us to re-write the Double Field Theory equations of motion in terms of geometric quantities (like generalized torsion and non-metricity…
The coupling of the electromagnetic field to gravity is an age-old problem. Presently, there is a resurgence of interest in it, mainly for two reasons: (i) Experimental investigations are under way with ever increasing precision, be it in…
I investigate the general extension of Einstein's gravity by considering the third rank non-metricity tensor and the torsion tensor. The minimal coupling to Dirac fields faces an ambiguity coming from a severe arbitrariness of the…
The teleparallel gravity theory, treated physically as a gauge theory of translations, naturally represents a particular case of the most general gauge-theoretic model based on the general affine group of spacetime. On the other hand,…
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…
Starting from the most general second-order in derivatives theories describing extended objects of arbitrary dimension evolving geodetically in a codimension-one flat ambient space-time, we determine the subset of models yielding…
The Minkowski space of special relativity can be understood as a flat 4-dimensional affine space enriched by a constant Minkowski metric. If we gauge the general affine group and `superimpose' the metric, then we arrive at the metric-affine…
We study general metric-affine theories of gravity in which the metric and connection are the two independent fundamental variables. In this framework, we use Lagrange-Noether methods to derive the identities and the conservation laws that…