The dynamics of metric-affine gravity

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Publication:635033

DOI10.1016/J.AOP.2011.02.008zbMATH Open1223.83044arXiv1008.0171OpenAlexW3123623284WikidataQ62580628 ScholiaQ62580628MaRDI QIDQ635033FDOQ635033


Authors: Vincenzo Vitagliano, Thomas P. Sotiriou, S. Liberati Edit this on Wikidata


Publication date: 19 August 2011

Published in: Annals of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Metric-affine theories of gravity provide an interesting alternative to General Relativity: in such an approach, the metric and the affine (not necessarily symmetric) connection are independent quantities. Furthermore, the action should include covariant derivatives of the matter fields, with the covariant derivative naturally defined using the independent connection. As a result, in metric-affine theories a direct coupling involving matter and connection is also present. The role and the dynamics of the connection in such theories is explored. We employ power counting in order to construct the action and search for the minimal requirements it should satisfy for the connection to be dynamical. We find that for the most general action containing lower order invariants of the curvature and the torsion the independent connection does not carry any dynamics. It actually reduces to the role of an auxiliary field and can be completely eliminated algebraically in favour of the metric and the matter field, introducing extra interactions with respect to general relativity. However, we also show that including higher order terms in the action radically changes this picture and excites new degrees of freedom in the connection, making it (or parts of it) dynamical. Constructing actions that constitute exceptions to this rule requires significant fine tuned and/or extra a priori constraints on the connection. We also consider f(R) actions as a particular example in order to show that they constitute a distinct class of metric-affine theories with special properties, and as such they cannot be used as representative toy theories to study the properties of metric-affine gravity.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.0171




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