Related papers: MacDowell-Mansouri gravity and Cartan geometry
In the MacDowell-Mansouri formulation of general relativity, the spin connection and coframe variables are incorporated into a single Lie algebra-valued connection called the MacDowell-Mansouri connection, $\omega$. From the curvature form…
We make a case for the unique relevance of Cartan geometry for gauge theories of gravity and supergravity. We introduce our discussion by recapitulating historical threads, providing motivations. In a first part we review the geometry of…
Einstein gravity in both 3 and 4 dimensions, as well as some interesting generalizations, can be written as gauge theories in which the connection is a Cartan connection for geometry modeled on a symmetric space. The relevant models in 3…
We reformulate the general theory of relativity in the language of Riemann-Cartan geometry. We start from the assumption that the space-time can be described as a non-Riemannian manifold, which, in addition to the metric field, is endowed…
A distance can be measured by monitoring how much a wheel has rotated when rolled without slipping. This simple idea underlies the mathematics of Cartan geometry. The Cartan-geometric description of gravity consists of a SO(1,4) gauge…
Gravity is commonly thought of as one of the four force fields in nature. However, in standard formulations its mathematical structure is rather different from the Yang-Mills fields of particle physics that govern the electromagnetic, weak,…
We use the theory of Cartan connections to analyze the geometrical structures underpinning the gauge-theoretical descriptions of the gravitational interaction. According to the theory of Cartan connections, the spin connection $\omega$ and…
This article is a review of modern approaches to gravity that treat the gravitational interaction as a type of gauge theory. The purpose of the article is twofold. First, it is written in a colloquial style and is intended to be a…
Using the recently advanced Galilean gauge theory (GGT) we give a comprehensive construction of torsional Newton Cartan geometry. The coupling of a Galilean symmetric model with background NC geometry following GGT is illustrated by a free…
We consider the conformal group of a space of dim n=p+q, with SO(p,q) metric. The quotient of this group by its homogeneous Weyl subgroup gives a principal fiber bundle with 2n-dim base manifold and Weyl fibers. The Cartan generalization to…
Cartan's spacetime reformulation of the Newtonian theory of gravity is a generally-covariant Galilean-relativistic limit-form of Einstein's theory of gravity known as the Newton-Cartan theory. According to this theory, space is flat, time…
Cartan geometry provides a unifying algebraic construction of curvature and torsion, based on an underlying model Lie algebra -- a viewpoint that can be extended naturally to the higher algebraic structures underlying supergravity. We…
This paper develops the theory of Cartan geometries modeled on the future lightlike cone of Lorentz Minkowski spacetime, which we refer to as lightlike Cartan geometries. We show that such geometries naturally induce on the base manifold a…
We briefly review two recently developed extensions of the Lorentzian geometry of spacetime and prove that they are in fact closely related. The first is the concept of observer space, which generalizes the space of Lorentzian observers,…
In this work we generalize the MacDowell-Mansouri theory of gravity using strict 2-groups. To achieve this, we construct the categorical generalization of the ISO(4,1) group, which we call the de Sitter 2-group. We then proceed to…
We investigate the Cartan formalism in $F(R)$ gravity. $F(R)$ gravity has been introduced as a theory to explain cosmological accelerated expansion by replacing the Ricci scalar $R$ in the Einstein-Hilbert action with a function of $R$. As…
We show that there are 2 equivalent first order descriptions of 2+1 gravity with non-zero cosmological constant. One is the well-known spacetime description and the other is in terms of evolving conformal geometry. The key tool that links…
We present the geometry of spacetimes that are tangentially approximated by de Sitter spaces whose cosmological constants vary over spacetime. Cartan geometry provides one with the tools to describe manifolds that reduce to a homogeneous…
The generalized Finsler geometry, as well as Finsler geometry, is a generalization of Riemann geometry. The generalized Finsler geometry can be endowed with the Cartan connection. The generalized Finsler geometry and its Cartan connection…
We give a full classification of general affine connections on Galilei manifolds in terms of independently specifiable tensor fields. This generalises the well-known case of (torsional) Galilei connections, i.e. connections compatible with…