English

New first order Lagrangian for General Relativity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-03-31 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We describe a new BF-type first-order in derivatives Lagrangian for General Relativity. The Lagrangian depends on a connection field as well as a Lie-algebra valued two-form field, with no other fields present. There are two free parameters, which translate into the cosmological constant and the coefficient in front of a topological term. When one of the parameters is set to zero, the theory becomes topological. When the other parameter is zero, the theory reduces to the (anti-) self-dual gravity. Thus, our new Lagrangian interpolates between the topological and anti-self-dual gravities. It also interprets GR as the (anti-) self-dual gravity with an extra quadratic in the auxiliary two-form field term added to the Lagrangian, precisely paralleling the situation in Yang-Mills theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1503.08640,
  title  = {New first order Lagrangian for General Relativity},
  author = {Yannick Herfray and Kirill Krasnov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.08640},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:05:31.248Z