Routh reduction of Palatini gravity in vacuum (Q2185863)

In this article, the author presents a geometrical framework that contributes to a better comprehension of the correspondence between Einstein-Hilbert and Palatini gravity. The Einstein-Hilbert gravity is considered as a kind of Routh reduction of the underlying field theory for Palatini gravity. More precisely, let \[ J^{1}\tau =LM\times _{M}C(LM) \] where \(\tau \colon LM\rightarrow M\) is the bundle of frames and \(C(LM)\rightarrow M\) is the connection bundle. The Palatini gravity variational problem is given by the triple \[ \left( \tau _{1}^{\prime }\colon {\large \tau }_{0}\rightarrow M, \mathcal{L}_{PG},\left\langle \omega _{\mathfrak{p}}\right\rangle \right) \] where \(\tau _{0}\subset J^{1}\tau \) is the submanifold corresponding to the torsion zero constraint, \(\mathcal{L}_{PG}\) is a Lagrangian \(m\)-form on \({\large \tau }_{0}\) and \(\left\langle \omega _{\mathfrak{p}}\right\rangle \) is an exterior differential system on \({\large \tau }_{0}\) encoding the metricity conditions. And, the Einstein-Hilbert gravity variational problem is given by the triple \[ \left( \left( \tau _{\Sigma }\right) _{2}\colon J^{2}{\large \tau }_{\Sigma }\rightarrow M,\mathcal{L}_{EH},\mathcal{I}_{\mathrm{con}}^{\Sigma }\right) \] where \(\tau _{\Sigma }\colon \Sigma \rightarrow M\) is the bundle of metrics with a given signature, \(\mathcal{L}_{EH}\) is a second-order Lagrangian density and and \(\mathcal{I}_{\mathrm{con}}^{\Sigma }\) is the contact structure on the second-order bundle \(J^{2}{\large \tau }_{\Sigma }\). The main problem considered by the author is to establish a correspondence between the extremals of the Palatini gravity variational problem, with the extremals for the Einstein-Hilbert gravity variational problem. The two main results of this article are: -- Routh reduction of Palatini gravity: The author proves that any section obeying the equations of motion for Palatini gravity projects to a holonomic section obeying the Einstein-Hilbert equations of motion (Theorem 11.4). -- Reconstruction of metrics verifying Einstein equations of gravity; that is, given a metric \(\zeta \colon M\rightarrow \Sigma \) satisfying the flat condition and the Einstein-Hilbert equations of motion, there exists a section \(\hat{Z}\colon M\rightarrow \tau _{0}\) that is an extremal of the Griffiths variational problem for Palatini gravity (Theorem 11.12).