Related papers: Why is the metric invertible?

Dipole fields are common in electromagnetism and may be viewed as the result of a positive and negative charge (or pole) which are close together. A dipole field in gravity is not expected to exist because negative mass has never been…

We give a set of local geometric conditions on a spacetime metric which are necessary and sufficient for it to be a null electrovacuum, that is, the metric is part of a solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations with a null electromagnetic…

In a recent paper we have established the form of the metric-torsional conformal gravitational field equations, and in the present paper we study their vacuum configurations; we will consider a specific situation that will enable us to look…

Emergent modified gravity has shown that the canonical formulation of general relativity gives rise to a larger class of covariant modifications than action-based approaches, so far in symmetry-reduced models. This outcome is made possible…

The explicit expressions for the one-loop non-perturbative corrections to the gravitational effective action induced by a scalar field on a stationary gravitational background are obtained both at zero and finite temperatures. The…

In the context of metric-affine gravity theories, where the metric and connection are independent, we examine actions involving quadratic terms in the Ricci scalar curvature and the Holst invariant. These actions are non-minimally coupled…

The issue of whether some manifestations of gravitation in the quantum domain, are indicative or not of a non-geometrical aspect in gravitation is discussed. We examine some examples that have been considered in this context, providing a…

In the most general formulation of gravity, the metric and connection are independent degrees of freedom, and the connection may include torsion and non-metricity (or distortion, collectively) degrees of freedom, resulting in a huge number…

In this work we provide the motivation for considering non-Riemannian models in cosmology. Non-Riemannian extensions of general relativity theory have been studied for a long time. In such theories the spacetime continuum is no longer…

In metric-affine theories of gravity such as the C-theories, the spacetime connection is associated to a metric that is nontrivially related to the physical metric. In this article, such theories are rewritten in terms of a single metric…

A new way is proposed to cancel the cosmological constant. The proposal involves the metric determinant acting as a type of self-adjusting $q$-field without need of a fine-tuned chemical potential. Since the determinant of the metric now…

We consider vacuum polarization effect of a conformally coupled massless scalar field in the background produced by an idealized straight cosmic string. Using previous criterion we show the calculation of back reaction of the field to the…

It is shown that the one-loop effective action of unimodular gravity is the same as that of ordinary gravity, restricted to unimodular metrics. The only difference is in the treatment of the global scale degree of freedom and of the…

We show that the new type of "non-metric" gravity theories introduced independently by Bengtsson and Krasnov can in fact be reexpressed explicitely as a metrical theory coupled to an auxiliary field. We unravel why such theories possess…

Why does the physical 4-dimensional space have a 3 + 1 signature rather than a 4 + 0 or a 2 + 2 for its metric? We give a simple explanation based largely on a group-theoretic argument a la Wigner. Applied to flat spaces of higher…

We review the status of a certain (infinite) class of four-dimensional generally covariant theories propagating two degrees of freedom that are formulated without any direct mention of the metric. General relativity itself (in its Plebanski…

We provide a brief overview of what is known about Quadratic Gravity, which includes terms quadratic in the curvatures in the fundamental action. This is proposed as a renormalizeable UV completion for quantum gravity which continues to use…

We present a novel derivation of the spacetime metric generated by matter, without invoking Einstein's field equations. For static sources, the metric arises from a relativistic formulation of D'Alembert's principle, where the inertial…

Symmetries of generalized gravitational actions, yielding field equations which typically involve at most second-order derivatives of the metric, are considered. The field equations for several different higher-derivative theories in the…

Our conventional system of physical units is based on local or microscopic {\it dimensional} quantities which are {\it defined}, for convenience or otherwise aesthetic reasons, to be spacetime-independent. A more general choice of units may…