Related papers: General relativity with a topological phase: an ac…
In the spirit of Sakharov's `metric elasticity' proposal, we draw a loose analogy between general relativity and the hydrodynamic state of a quantum gas. In the `top-down' approach, we examine the various conditions which underlie the…
A retrospective analysis of the field theory of gravitation, describing gravitational field in the same way as other fields of matter in the flat space-time, is done. The field approach could be called "quantum gravidynamics" to distinguish…
General relativity is a set of physical and geometric principles, which lead to a set of (Einstein) field equations that determine the gravitational field, and to the geodesic equations that describe light propagation and the motion of…
The principle of equivalence provides a description of gravity in terms of the metric tensor and determines how gravity affects the light cone structure of the space-time. This, in turn, leads to the existence of observers (in any…
I would claim that we do not have a suitably general definition of what a topological phase is, or more importantly, any robust understanding of how to enter one even in the world of mathematical models. The latter is, of course, the more…
Conventional non-Abelian SO(4) gauge theory is able to describe gravity provided the gauge field possesses a specific polarized vacuum state. In this vacuum the instantons and anti-instantons have a preferred direction of orientation. Their…
It is shown how to write the first order action for gravity in a gauge theoretic formalism where the spin connection and frame field degrees of freedom are assimilated together into a gauge connection. It is then shown how to couple the…
A novel first order action principle has been proposed as the possible foundation for a more fundamental theory of General Relativity and the Standard Model. It is shown in this article that the proposal consistently incorporates gravity…
Phase transitions between two competing vacua of a given theory are quite common in physics. We discuss how to construct the space-time solutions that allow the description of phase transitions between different branches (or asymptotics) of…
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,…
A new variational approach for general relativity and modified theories of gravity is presented. In addition to the metric tensor, two independent affine connections enter the action as dynamical variables. In the matter action the…
General Relativity can be reformulated as a diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory of the Lorentz group, with Lagrangian of the type $f(F\wedge F)$, where $F$ is the curvature 2-form of the spin connection. A theory from this class with a…
The Hamiltonian approach to the General Relativity is formulated as a joint nonlinear realization of conformal and affine symmetries by means of the Dirac scalar dilaton and the Maurer-Cartan forms. The dominance of the Casimir vacuum…
The conformal transformation in the Einstein - Hilbert action leads to a new frame where an extra scalar degree of freedom is compensated by the local conformal-like symmetry. We write down a most general action resulting from such…
Gravity theory is the basis of modern cosmological models. Thirring-Feynman's tensor field approach to gravitation is an alternative to General Relativity (GR). Though Field Gravity (FG) approach is still developing subject, it opens new…
A model of two--dimensional gravity with an action depending only on a linear connection is considered. This model is a topological one, in the sense that the classical action does not contain a metric or zweibein at all. A metric and an…
Spin foam models of quantum gravity are based on Plebanski's formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory. We give an alternative formulation of gravity as BF theory plus a certain potential term for the B-field. When the…
We consider a lattice action which forbids large fields, and which remains invariant under smooth deformations of the field. Such a "topological" action depends on one parameter, the field cutoff, but does not have a classical continuum…
General covariance in quantum gravity is seen once one integrates over all possible metrics. In recent years topological field theories have given us a different route to general covariance without integrating over all possible metrics.…
We provide a new extension of general relativity (GR) which has the remarkable property of being more constrained than GR plus a cosmological constant, having one less free parameter. This is implemented by allowing the cosmological…