Related papers: The physical gravitational degrees of freedom
There exist several ways of constructing general relativity from `first principles': Einstein's original derivation, Lovelock's results concerning the exceptional nature of the Einstein tensor from a mathematical perspective, and…
The Einsteinian Theory of Gravitation ("General Theory of Relativity") is founded essentially; on the reception that the geometrical properties of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum are defined from the matter in it. Contrary to this,…
We present a scale-invariant theory, conformal gravity, which closely resembles the geometrodynamical formulation of general relativity (GR). While previous attempts to create scale-invariant theories of gravity have been based on Weyl's…
Modifications of Einstein's theory of gravitation have been extensively considered in the past years, in connection to both cosmology and quantum gravity. Higher-curvature and higher-derivative gravity theories constitute the main examples…
The Hamiltonian structure of General Relativity (GR), for both metric and tetrad gravity in a definite continuous family of space-times, is fully exploited in order to show that: i) the "Hole Argument" can be bypassed by means of a specific…
Minimally modified gravity theories are modifications of general relativity with two local gravitational degrees of freedom in four dimensions. Their construction relies on the breaking of 4D diffeomorphism invariance keeping however the…
This work places the invariant $ds^2$ at the center of the gravitational interaction, interpreting it not as a purely geometric object but as the differential of proper time, endowed with direct physical meaning. Starting from the extension…
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…
The four-dimensional gauge group of general relativity corresponds to arbitrary coordinate transformations on a four-manifold. Theories of gravity with a dynamical structure remarkably like Einstein's theory can be obtained on the basis of…
The Einstein-Cartan theory of gravity can arise from a mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking within the context of pre-geometric gauge theories. In this work, we develop the Hamiltonian analysis of such theories. By making contact with…
The gravitational field equations in general relativity (GR) consist of a sophisticated system of nonlinear partial differential equations. Solving such equations in some generic off-diagonal forms is usually a hard analytic or numeric…
$[n+1]$-dimensional ($n\geq 3$) smooth Einsteinian spaces of Euclidean and Lorentzian signature are considered. The base manifold $M$ is supposed to be smoothly foliated by a two-parameter family of codimension-two-surfaces which are…
A discussion is given of recent developments in canonical gravity that assimilates the conformal analysis of gravitational degrees of freedom. The work is motivated by the problem of time in quantum gravity and is carried out at the metric…
A derivation of the equations of motion of general relativity is presented that does not invoke the Axiom of Choice, but requires the explicit construction of a choice function q for continuous three-space regions. The motivation for this…
We propose a step-by-step manual for the construction of alternative theories of gravity, perturbatively as well as nonperturbatively. The construction is guided by no more than two fundamental principles that we impose on the gravitational…
General relativity is a covariant theory of two transverse, traceless graviton degrees of freedom. According to a theorem of Hojman, Kuchar, and Teitelboim, modifications of general relativity must either introduce new degrees of freedom or…
In the framework of the theory of scale relativity, we suggest a solution to the cosmological problem of the formation and evolution of gravitational structures on many scales. This approach is based on the giving up of the hypothesis of…
We showed that the principle of nongravitating vacuum energy, when formulated in the first order formalism, solves the cosmological constant problem. The most appealing formulation of the theory displays a local symmetry associated with the…
We give an alternative description of the physical content of general relativity that does not require a Lorentz invariant spacetime. Instead, we find that gravity admits a dual description in terms of a theory where local size is…
Fefferman and Graham showed some time ago that four dimensional conformal geometries could be analyzed in terms of six dimensional, ambient, Riemannian geometries admitting a closed homothety. Recently it was shown how conformal geometry…