English

1/r potential in higher dimensions

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-02-02 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

In Einstein gravity, gravitational potential goes as 1/rd31/r^{d-3} in dd non-compactified spacetime dimensions, which assumes the familiar 1/r1/r form in four dimensions. On the other hand, it goes as 1/rα1/r^{\alpha}, with α=(d2m1)/m\alpha=(d-2m-1)/m, in pure Lovelock gravity involving only one mmth order term of the Lovelock polynomial in the gravitational action. The latter offers a novel possibility of having 1/r1/r potential for the non-compactified dimension spectrum given by d=3m+1d=3m+1. Thus it turns out that in the two prototype gravitational settings of isolated objects, like black holes and the universe as a whole --- cosmological models, the Einstein gravity in four and mmth order pure Lovelock gravity in 3m+13m+1 dimensions behave in a similar fashion as far as gravitational interactions are considered. However propagation of gravitational waves (or the number of degrees of freedom) does indeed serve as a discriminator because it has two polarizations only in four dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.01961,
  title  = {1/r potential in higher dimensions},
  author = {Sumanta Chakraborty and Naresh Dadhich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.01961},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, no figures; Revised version, title changed;

R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:54:51.219Z