Related papers: Boundary terms in cosmology
It is common knowledge that the Einstein-Hilbert action does not furnish a well-posed variational principle. The usual solution to this problem is to add an extra boundary term to the action, called a counter-term, so that the variational…
It is well-known that the presence of a spacetime boundary requires the conventional Einstein-Hilbert (EH) action to be supplemented by the Gibbons-Hawking (GH) boundary term in order to retain the standard variational procedure. When the…
The Hamiltonian for physical systems and dynamic geometry generates the evolution of a spatial region along a vector field. It includes a boundary term which not only determines the value of the Hamiltonian, but also, via the boundary term…
The main goal of this paper is to get in a straightforward form the field equations in metric f(R) gravity, using elementary variational principles and adding a boundary term in the action, instead of the usual treatment in an equivalent…
A recent analysis of real general relativity based on multisymplectic techniques has shown that boundary terms may occur in the constraint equations, unless some boundary conditions are imposed. This paper studies the corresponding form of…
The Hamiltonian for dynamic geometry generates the evolution of a spatial region along a vector field. It includes a boundary term which determines both the value of the Hamiltonian and the boundary conditions. The value gives the…
We modify the scalar Einstein-aether theory by breaking the Lorentz invariance of a gravitational theory coupled to a Galileon type scalar field. This is done by introducing a Lagrange multiplier term into the action, thus ensuring that the…
We discuss the criteria that must be satisfied by a well-posed variational principle. We clarify the role of Gibbons-Hawking-York type boundary terms in the actions of higher derivative models of gravity, such as F(R) gravity, and argue…
The Hamiltonian for dynamic geometry generates the evolution of a spatial region along a vector field. It includes a boundary term which determines both the value of the Hamiltonian and the boundary conditions. The value gives the…
The covariant phase space method of Iyer, Lee, Wald, and Zoupas gives an elegant way to understand the Hamiltonian dynamics of Lagrangian field theories without breaking covariance. The original literature however does not systematically…
We review the geometric superspace approach to the boundary problem in supergravity, retracing the geometric construction of four-dimensional supergravity Lagrangians in the presence of a non-trivial boundary of spacetime. We first focus on…
The Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian has no well-defined variational derivative with respect to the metric. This issue has to be tackled by adding a suitable surface term to the action, which is a peculiar feature of gravity. We also know that…
A unique constraint is defined within the framework of scalar-tensor theories, whereby the conformal factor is fixed to the fluctuation associated to the effective mass of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for a Klein-Gordon field. The effective…
We describe the dynamics of a cosmological term in the spherically symmetric case by an r-dependent second rank symmetric tensor \Lambda_{\mu\nu} invariant under boosts in the radial direction. The cosmological tensor \Lambda_{\mu\nu}…
A nonvanishing cosmological term in Einstein's equations implies a nonvanishing spacetime curvature even in absence of any kind of matter. It would, in consequence, affect many of the underlying kinematic tenets of physical theory. The…
A new type of fluid matter model in general relativity is introduced, in which the fluid particles are subject to velocity diffusion without friction. In order to compensate for the energy gained by the fluid particles due to diffusion, a…
A covariant Lagrangian formulation of a solution to the cosmological constant problem, based on vizualising the fluctuations of the vacuum energy as a non-equilibrium process with stochastic behaviour, is presented. The variational…
We show that the cosmological constant appears as a Lagrange multiplier if nature is described by a canonical noncommutative spacetime. It is thus an arbitrary parameter unrelated to the action and thus to vacuum fluctuations. The…
Considering a generalization of the Gibbons-Hawking-York covariant boundary action that depends on both the extrinsic and the intrinsic geometry of the boundary, we derive boundary conditions for the cosmological background and tensor…
We intend to clarify the interplay between boundary terms and conformal transformations in scalar-tensor theories of gravity. We first consider the action for pure gravity in five dimensions and show that, on compactifing a la Kaluza-Klein…