Related papers: Constraints are not enough
We show that general infrared modifications of the Einstein-Hilbert action obtained by addition of curvature invariants are not viable. These modifications contain either ghosts or light gravity scalars. A very specific fine-tuning might…
We investigate torsion-driven cosmological dynamics within the framework of Einstein-Cartan gravity using the De Donder-Weyl Hamiltonian formalism, where the tetrad and Lorentz connection act as independent variables and the Hamiltonian…
We investigate the requirement of suppressing spacetime geometries with a curvature singularity via destructive interference in the Lorentzian gravitational path integral as a constraint on the microscopic action for gravity. Based on…
The saddle point approximation to formal quantum gravitational partition functions has yielded plausible computations of horizon entropy in various settings, but it stands on shaky ground. In this paper we visit some of that shaky ground,…
Fruitful ideas on how to quantize gravity are few and far between. In this paper, we give a complete description of a recently introduced non-perturbative gravitational path integral whose continuum limit has already been investigated…
We derive the leading quantum corrections to the gravitational potentials in a de Sitter background, due to the vacuum polarization from loops of conformal fields. Our results are valid for arbitrary conformal theories, even strongly…
A well-defined variational principle for gravitational actions typically requires to cancel boundary terms produced by the variation of the bulk action with a suitable set of boundary counterterms. This can be achieved by carefully…
General relativity is highly successful in explaining a wide range of gravitational phenomena including the gravitational waves emitted by binary systems and the shadows cast by supermassive black holes. From a modern perspective the theory…
This paper analyses the cosmological consequences of a modified theory of gravity whose action integral is built from a linear combination of the Ricci scalar $R$ and a quadratic term in the covariant derivative of $R$. The resulting…
A key problem in the attempt to quantize the gravitational field is the choice of boundary conditions. These are mixed, in that spatial and normal components of metric perturbations obey different sets of boundary conditions. In the…
We derive rigorous bounds on corrections to Einstein gravity using unitarity and analyticity of graviton scattering amplitudes. In $D\geq 4$ spacetime dimensions, these consistency conditions mandate positive coefficients for certain…
False vacuum decay in field theory may be formulated as a boundary value problem in Euclidean space. In a previous work, we studied its solution in single scalar field theories with quadratic gravity and used it to find obstructions to…
We consider cosmological constraints arising from the background expansion history on the ef- fective field theory of cosmic acceleration, a theoretical framework that allows for a unified way to classify both models of dark energy and…
A consistent variational procedure applied to the gravitational action requires according to Gibbons and Hawking a certain balance between the volume and boundary parts of the action. We consider the problem of preserving this balance in…
The quantum gravity problem of N point particles interacting with the gravitational field in 2+1 dimensions is approached working out the phase-space functional integral. The maximally slicing gauge is adopted for a non compact open…
The Janis-Newman-Winicour metric is a solution of Einstein's gravity minimally coupled to a real massless scalar field. The $\gamma$-metric is instead a vacuum solution of Einstein's gravity. These spacetimes have no horizon and possess a…
The Einstein-Hilbert action for general relativity is not well posed in terms of the metric $g_{ab}$ as a dynamical variable. There have been many proposals to obtain an well posed action principle for general relativity, e.g., addition of…
The Weingarten relations satisfied by rotationally symmetric surfaces in Euclidean 3-space E3 are considered from three points of view: restrictions on the slope of the relation at umbilic points, the action of SL2(R) as fractional linear…
We consider the Einstein-Dirac field equations describing a self-gravitating massive neutrino, looking for axially-symmetric exact solutions; in the search of general solutions, we find some that are specific and which have critical…
We propose a theory of quantum gravity which formulates the quantum theory as a nonperturbative path integral, where each spacetime history appears with a weight given by the exponentiated Einstein-Hilbert action of the corresponding causal…