Related papers: A fresh look at boundary terms in Einstein-Hilbert…
We present the variational action principle for initial value problems in classical, conservative-force point particle mechanics. We rigorously derive this formulation by taking the classical limit of the Schwinger-Keldysh expression for…
The Einstein-Hilbert action (and thus the dynamics of gravity) can be obtained by combining the principle of equivalence, special relativity and quantum theory in the Rindler frame and postulating that the horizon area must be proportional…
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…
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…
Einstein's vierbein formulation of general relativity based on the notion of distant parallelism (teleparallelism) naturally introduces a covariant surface term in addition to the Einstein-Hilbert action. We investigate the action principle…
The gravitational interaction, as described by the Einstein-Cartan theory, is shown to emerge as the by-product of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a gauge symmetry in a pre-geometric four-dimensional spacetime. Starting from a…
We consider $f(R)$ gravity and Born-Infeld-Einstein (BIE) gravity in formulations where the metric and connection are treated independently and integrate out the metric to find the corresponding models solely in terms of the connection, the…
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…
An approach to the quantization of gravity in the presence matter is examined which starts from the classical Einstein-Hilbert action and matter approximated by "point" particles minimally coupled to the metric. Upon quantization, the…
This article, written to appear as a chapter in "The Springer Handbook of Spacetime", is a review of the initial value problem for Einstein's gravitational field theory in general relativity. Designed to be accessible to graduate students…
We consider the initial boundary value problem for free-evolution formulations of general relativity coupled to a parametrized family of coordinate conditions that includes both the moving puncture and harmonic gauges. We concentrate…
The Einstein-Hilbert action has a bulk term and a surface term (which arises from integrating a four divergence). I show that one can obtain Einstein's equations from the surface term alone. This leads to: (i) a novel, completely self…
As is well known, in order for the Einstein--Hilbert action to have a well defined variation, and therefore to be used for deriving field equation through the stationary action principle, it has to be amended by the addition of a suitable…
The Weiss variation of the Einstein-Hilbert action with an appropriate boundary term has been studied for general boundary surfaces; the boundary surfaces can be spacelike, timelike, or null. To achieve this we introduce an auxiliary…
We consider the initial boundary value problem for the Einstein vacuum equations in the maximal gauge, or more generally, in a gauge where the mean curvature of a timelike foliation is fixed near the boundary. We prove the existence of…
We discuss the initial-boundary value problem of General Relativity. Previous considerations for a toy model problem in electrodynamics motivate the introduction of a variational principle for the lapse with several attractive properties.…
We provide a well-defined variational principle for 3-dimensional flat space Einstein gravity by adding one half of the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term to the bulk action. We check the 0-point function, recovering consistency with…
The field equations of general relativity can be derived from the Einstein action, which is quadratic in connection coefficients, rather than the standard action involving the Gibbons-Hawking-York term and counterterm. We show that it is…
If gravity is an emergent phenomenon, as suggested by several recent results, then the structure of the action principle for gravity should encode this fact. With this motivation we study several features of the Einstein-Hilbert action and…
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…