Related papers: Pretty Good Gravity
Self-dual gravity is a diffeomorphism invariant theory in four dimensions that describes two propagating polarisations of the graviton and has a negative mass dimension coupling constant. Nevertheless, this theory is not only renormalisable…
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.…
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…
Motivated by string dualities we propose topological gravity as the early phase of our universe. The topological nature of this phase naturally leads to the explanation of many of the puzzles of early universe cosmology. A concrete…
It is shown that in some multi-supergraviton models, the contributions to the effective potential due to a non-trivial topology can be positive, giving rise in this way to a positive cosmological constant, as demanded by cosmological…
Self-duality in Euclidean gravitational set ups is a tool for finding remarkable geometries in four dimensions. From a holographic perspective, self-duality sets an algebraic relationship between two a priori independent boundary data: the…
The most general gravity Lagrangian in four dimensions contains three topological densities, namely Nieh-Yan, Pontryagin and Euler, in addition to the Hilbert-Palatini term. We set up a Hamiltonian formulation based on this Lagrangian. The…
A higher order theory of dilaton gravity is constructed as a generalization of the Einstein-Lovelock theory of pure gravity. Its Lagrangian contains terms with higher powers of the Riemann tensor and of the first two derivatives of the…
In three spacetime dimensions, general relativity becomes a topological field theory, whose dynamics can be largely described holographically by a two-dimensional conformal field theory at the ``boundary'' of spacetime. I review what is…
We analyse a simple example of a holographically dual pair in which we topologically twist both theories. The holography is based on the two-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric Liouville conformal field theory that defines a unitary bulk quantum…
Quasi-topological gravity is a new gravitational theory including curvature-cubed interactions and for which exact black hole solutions were constructed. In a holographic framework, classical quasi-topological gravity can be thought to be…
This thesis is broadly split into two parts. In the first part, simple state sum models for minimally coupled fermion and scalar fields are constructed on a $1$-manifold. The models are independent of the triangulation and give the same…
One-dimensional topological gravity is defined as a Gaussian integral as its partition function. The Gaussian integral supplies a toy model as a simpler version of one-matrix model that is well known to provide a description of…
Gravity is uniquely situated in between classical topological field theories and standard local field theories. This can be seen in the the quasi-local nature of gravitational observables, but is nowhere more apparent than in gravity's…
The possibility of noncommutative topological gravity arising in the same manner as Yang-Mills theory is explored. We use the Seiberg-Witten map to construct such a theory based on a SL(2,C) complex connection, from which the Euler…
A generalised canonical formulation of gravity is devised for foliations of spacetime with codimension $n\ge1$. The new formalism retains n-dimensional covariance and is especially suited to 2+2 decompositions of spacetime. It is also…
General Relativity is usually formulated as a theory with gauge invariance under the diffeomorphism group, but there is a 'dilaton' formulation where it is in addition invariant under Weyl transformations, and a 'unimodular' formulation…
We review recent progress in 2D gravity coupled to $d<1$ conformal matter, based on a representation of discrete gravity in terms of random matrices. We discuss the saddle point approximation for these models, including a class of related…
It is shown that the action for topological gravity in even dimensions is, except by a multiplicative constant, a gauged Wess-Zumino-Witten Term.
The gravity is classically formulated as the geometric curvature of the space-time in general relativity which is completely different from the other well-known physical forces. Since seeking a quantum framework for the gravity is a great…