The Weiss variation of the gravitational action

DOI10.1007/S10714-018-2420-2MaRDI QIDQ1622149zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Justin C. Feng, Richard Matzner

Publication date 12 November 2018

Published in General Relativity and Gravitation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04489

zbMATH Keywords

gibbons-Hawking-York termHamilton-Jacobi theoryvariation of areaWeiss variation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems) (83C05) Gravitational energy and conservation laws; groups of motions (83C40)

Abstract: The Weiss variational principle in mechanics and classical field theory is a variational principle which allows displacements of the boundary. We review the Weiss variation in mechanics and classical field theory, and present a novel geometric derivation of the Weiss variation for the gravitational action: the Einstein-Hilbert action plus the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term. In particular, we use the first and second variation of area formulas (we present a derivation accessible to physicists in an appendix) to interpret and vary the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term. The Weiss variation for the gravitational action is in principle known to the Relativity community, but the variation of area approach formalizes the derivation, and facilitates the discussion of time evolution in General Relativity. A potentially useful feature of the formalism presented in this article is that it avoids an explicit 3+1 decomposition in the bulk spacetime.

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Cited in

(5)

• Weiss variation for general boundaries
• Accelerating imperfect fluid
• Gravitational duality, Palatini variation and boundary terms: a synopsis
• Lorentzian threads and generalized complexity
• Glauber-Sudarshan states, wave functional of the universe and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation

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