On higher order gravities, their analogy to GR, and dimensional dependent version of Duff's trace anomaly relation (Q2503107)

The paper is almost a brief review introduction about the long history of higher order gravity theories and their applications. The author outlines the following points: (a) the homogeneity degree number provides an easy procedure to classify different Lagrangians terms, especially higher order Lagrangians; (b) the coefficients used in the Lanczos Lagrangian are specific to an equivalence class of any generic second order Lagrangians; (c) in four dimension the anomaly can have two contributions, i.e. the Euler density invariant, and a type B anomaly built from conformal invariants; (d) the particle spectrum in the quantum theory does not contain the scalar particles for the most general quadratic Lagrangian in four dimensions; (e) in two dimensions there is only one independent second order Lagrangian that can be considered; (f) the inclusion of the cosmological term is considered.