We construct an induced gravity (pregeometry) where both the Newton constant and the cosmological constant appear as integration constants in solving field equations. By adding the kinetic terms of ghosts and antighosts, an action of the induced gravity is transformed to a topological field theory. Moreover, by solving field equations of the topological field theory in the FRW universe, we find an inflation solution. The present study might shed some light on a close relationship between the induced gravity and the topological quantum field theory.
Topological order is a new type order that beyond Landau's symmetry breaking theory. It has some interesting properties, such as producing quasi-particles with fractional quantum numbers and fractional/Fermi statistics, robust gapless boundary modes and emergent gauge excitations. In this essay, we will show that the quantum gravity in $AdS_3$ spacetime can also have topological orders. Actually the theory has all the three features that define the topological order. We conjecture that quantum gravity in four dimension can also have topological orders.
The solution of topologically massive gravity with cosmological constant is reduced, for space-times with two commuting Killing vectors, to a special-relativistic dynamical problem. This approach is applied to the construction of a class of exact sourceless, horizonless solutions asymptotic to the BTZ extreme black holes.
A model in which the massive dilaton is introduced by minimally extending the two dimensional topological gravity is studied semi-classically. The theory is no longer topological because of the explicit Weyl scale symmetry breaking. Due to the dilaton the semiclassical stress-energy tensor gets renormalized and it is shown how the gravitational background coupled to the the dilaton depends on the dilaton mass as well as the renormalization mass scale, but not on the Newton's constant.
In this paper, we base on the formalism of Symbolic Gauge Theory in the case of General relativity; we calculate the Feynman diagrams for the interaction between harmonic gravitational connections in the topological field theory. These calculations provide insights to interactions between gravity and dark energy. They could, therefore, have important repercussions for current cosmological problems.
After a brief review of topological gravity, we present a superspace approach to this theory. This formulation allows us to recover in a natural manner various known results and to gain some insight into the precise relationship between different approaches to topological gravity. Though the main focus of our work is on the vielbein formalism, we also discuss the metric approach and its relationship with the former formalism.
We construct, and establish the (covariant) conservation of, a 4-index "super-stress tensor" for TMG. Separately, we discuss its invalidity in quadratic curvature models and suggest a generalization.
In this contribution, we re-assess the subject of topological gravity by following the Shift Supersymmetry formalism. The gauge-fixing of the theory goes under the Batallin-Vilkovisky (BV) prescription based on a diagram that contains both ghost and anti-ghost superfields, associated to the super-vielbein and the super-Lorentz connection. We extend the formulation of the topological gravity action to an arbitrary number of dimensions of the shift superspace by adopting a formulation based on the gauge-fixing for BF-type models.
Motivated by recent developments in black hole thermodynamics, we investigate van der Waals phase transitions of charged black holes in massive gravity. We find that massive gravity theories can exhibit strikingly different thermodynamic behaviour compared to that of Einstein gravity, and that the mass of the graviton can generate a range of new phase transitions for topological black holes that are otherwise forbidden.
We construct a topological field theory which, on the one hand, generalizes BF theories in that there is non-trivial coupling to `topological matter fields'; and, on the other, generalizes the three-dimensional model of Carlip and Gegenberg to arbitrary dimensional manifolds. Like the three dimensional model, the theory can be considered to describe a gravitational field interacting with topological matter. In particular, in two dimensions, the model is that of gravity on a torus. In four dimensions, the model is shown to admit constant curvature black hole solutions.
We construct a new gravitational action which includes cubic curvature interactions and which provides a useful toy model for the holographic study of a three parameter family of four- and higher-dimensional CFT's. We also investigate the black hole solutions of this new gravity theory. Further we examine the equations of motion of quasi-topological gravity. While the full equations in a general background are fourth-order in derivatives, we show that the linearized equations describing gravitons propagating in the AdS vacua match precisely the second-order equations of Einstein gravity.
We recast the action principle of four dimensional General Relativity so that it becomes amenable for perturbation theory which doesn't break general covariance. The coupling constant becomes dimensionless (G_{Newton} Λ) and extremely small 10^{-120}. We give an expression for the generating functional of perturbation theory. We show that the partition function of quantum General Relativity can be expressed as an expectation value of a certain topologically invariant observable. This sets up a framework in which quantum gravity can be studied perturbatively using the techniques of topological …
We propose a topological model of induced gravity (pregeometry) where both Newton's coupling constant and the cosmological constant appear as integration constants in solving field equations. The matter sector of a scalar field is also considered, and by solving field equations it is shown that various types of cosmological solutions in the FRW universe can be obtained. A detailed analysis is given of the meaning of the BRST transformations, which make the induced gravity be a topological field theory, by means of the canonical quantization analysis, and the physical reason why such BRST trans…
We construct the most general, to cubic order in curvature, theory of gravity whose (most general) static spherically symmetric vacuum solutions are fully described by a single field equation. The theory possess the following remarkable properties: i) it has a well-defined Einstein gravity limit ii) it admits `Schwarzschild-like' solutions characterized by a single metric function iii) on maximally symmetric backgrounds it propagates the same degrees of freedom as Einstein's gravity iv) Lovelock and quasi-topological gravities, as well as the recently developed Einsteinian cubic gravity [ArXiv…
The most general gravity Lagrangian in four dimensions contains three topological densities, namely Nieh-Yan, Pontryagin and Euler, in addition to the Hilbert-Palatini term. We set up a Hamiltonian formulation based on this Lagrangian. The resulting canonical theory depends on three parameters which are coefficients of these terms and is shown to admit a real SU(2) gauge theoretic interpretation with a set of seven first-class constraints. Thus, in addition to the Newton's constant, the theory of gravity contains three (topological) coupling constants, which might have non-trivial imports in t…
We examine the relations between observables in two- and three-dimensional quantum gravity by studying the coupling of topologically massive gravity to matter fields in non-trivial representations of the three-dimensional Lorentz group. We show that the gravitational renormalization of spin up to one-loop order in these theories reproduces the leading orders of the KPZ scaling relations for quantum Liouville theory. We demonstrate that the two-dimensional scaling dimensions can be computed from tree-level Aharonov-Bohm scattering amplitudes between the charged particles in the limit where the …
In this paper we report some results on the expectation values of a set of observables introduced for 3-dimensional Riemannian quantum gravity with positive cosmological constant, that is, observables in the Turaev-Viro model. Instead of giving a formal description of the observables, we just formulate the paper by examples. This means that we just show how an idea works with particular cases and give a way to compute 'expectation values' in general by a topological procedure.
We provide a simple method to compute the energy in higher curvature gravity in asymptotically AdS spacetimes in even dimensions. It follows from the combined use of topological terms added to the gravity action, and the Wald charges derived from the augmented action functional. No additional boundary terms are needed. As a consistency check, we show that the formula for the conserved quantities derived in this way yields the correct result for the mass of asymptotically AdS black holes.
In this paper we study (3+1) dimensional holographic superconductors in quasi-topological gravity which is recently proposed by R. Myers {\it et.al.}. Through both analytical and numerical analysis, we find in general the condensation becomes harder with the increase of coupling parameters of higher curvature terms. In particular, comparing with those in ordinary Gauss-Bonnet gravity, we find that positive cubic corrections in quasi-topological gravity suppress the condensation while negative cubic terms make it easier. We also calculate the conductivity numerically for various coupling parame…
We construct background-independent Noether charges in Topologically Massive Gravity with negative cosmological constant using its first-order formulation. The procedure is carried out by keeping track of the surface terms in the variation of the action, regardless the value of the gravitational Chern-Simons coupling $μ$. In particular, this method provides a definition of conserved quantities for solutions at the chiral point $μl = 1$ ($l$ is the AdS radius) that contain logarithmic terms (Log Gravity). It is also shown that the charge formula gives a finite result for warped AdS black holes …
Under some plausible assumptions, we find that the dual formulation of linearized gravity in D=5 can be nontrivially coupled to the topological BF model in such a way that the interacting theory exhibits a deformed gauge algebra and some deformed, on-shell reducibility relations. Moreover, the tensor field with the mixed symmetry (2,1) gains some shift gauge transformations with parameters from the BF sector.
We present the topological solutions of Einstein gravity in the presence of a non-Abelian Yang-Mills field. In ($n+1$) dimensions, we consider the $So(n(n-1)/2-1,1)$ semisimple group as the Yang-Mills gauge group, and introduce the black hole solutions with hyperbolic horizon. We argue that the 4-dimensional solution is exactly the same as the 4-dimensional solution of Einstein-Maxwell gravity, while the higher-dimensional solutions are new. We investigate the properties of the higher-dimensional solutions and find that these solutions in 5 dimensions have the same properties as the topologica…
For the the quintic quasitopological action which has no well-defined variational principle, we introduced a surface term that for a spacetime with flat boundaries make the action well-defined. Moreover, we investigated the numerical solutions of the above-mentioned gravity coupled to the nonlinear logarithmic and exponential electrodynamics. It has no horizon and curvature except one conical singularity at $r=0$ with a deficit angle $δϕ$. Also we found the counterterm which removes non-logarithmic divergences for the static quintic quasitopological gravity. Using this counterterm one can calc…
In four dimensional gravity theory, the Barbero-Immirzi parameter has a topological origin, and can be identified as the coefficient multiplying the Nieh-Yan topological density in the gravity Lagrangian, as proposed by Date et al.[1]. Based on this fact, a first order action formulation for spacetimes with boundaries is introduced. The bulk Lagrangian, containing the Nieh-Yan density, needs to be supplemented with suitable boundary terms so that it leads to a well-defined variational principle. Within this general framework, we analyse spacetimes with and without a cosmological constant. For …
We study z=4 Topological black hole in 4+1 dimensional Horava-Lifshitz gravity and we calculate analytically the quasinormal modes of scalar perturbations and from these quasinormal modes we show that z=4 Topological black hole in 4+1 dimensional Horava-Lifshitz gravity is stable.
A Dirac spinor is coupled to topologically massive gravity and the D=3 dimensional action is reduced to D=2 dimensions with a metric that includes both the electromagnetic potential 1-form A and a dilaton scalar ϕ. The dimensionnaly reduced spinor is made a mass eigenstate with a (local) chiral rotation. The non-trivial interactions thus induced are discussed.
Quantum field theory successfully explains the origin of all fundamental forces except gravity due to the renormalizability problem. In this paper, we proposed a topological scenario to understand this puzzle. First, we proposed a $3+1$D topological (quantum) gravity theory which is renormalizable, and it can be regarded as a straightforward generalization of Edward Witten's Chern-Simons theory approach to $2+1$D topological gravity. Then, we showed that the (vacuum) Einstein-Cartan equation and classical space-time naturally emerge from topological (quantum) gravity via loop condensation. The…
It is well known that three-dimensional Einstein's gravity without matter is topological, i.e. it does not have local propagating degrees of freedom. The main result of this work is to show that dynamics in the gravitational sector can be induced by employing the gauge principle on the matter sector. This is described by a non-dynamical fermion model that supports a global gauge symmetry. By gauging this symmetry, a vector-spinor field is added to the original action to preserve the local gauge invariance. By integrating out this spin-3/2 field, we obtain a gravitational Chern-Simons term that…
We show that for three dimensional space-times admitting a hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector field Deser, Jackiw and Templeton's vacuum field equations of topologically massive gravity allow only the trivial flat space-time solution. Thus spin is necessary to support topological mass.
By making use of the complete decomposition of SO(3) spin connection, the topological defect in 3-dimensional Euclidean gravity is studied in detail. The topological structure of disclination is given as the combination of a monopole structure and a vortex structure. Furthermore, the Kac-Moody algebra generated by the monopole and vortex is discussed in three dimensional Chern-Simons theory.
We present a class of exact solutions of Weyl conformal gravity, which have an interpretation as topological black holes. Solutions with negative, zero or positive scalar curvature at infinity are found, the former generalizing the well-known topological black holes in anti-de Sitter gravity. The rather delicate question of thermodynamic properties of such objects in Weyl conformal gravity is discussed; suggesting that the thermodynamics of the found solutions should be treated within the framework of gravity as an induced phenomenon, in the spirit of Sakharov's work.
Topological order (long-range entanglement) is a new type of order that beyond Landau's symmetry breaking theory. This concept plays important roles in modern condensed matter physics. The topological entanglement entropy provides a universal quantum number to characterize the topological order in a system. The topological entanglement entropy of the BTZ black hole was calculated and found that it coincides with that for fractional quantum Hall states. So the BTZ black hole has the same topological order with the fractional quantum Hall state. We show that the four dimensional black hole can a…
We include a Chern-Simons term in a GL(3,R) gauge formulation of gravity with a cosmological contribution in 2+1 dimension and we explore consistence showing that excitations must be causal and standard topological massive gravity is recovered from this type of construction at the torsionless limit.
We derive the general $Σ_2\times S$ solution of topologically massive gravity in vacuum and in presence of a cosmological constant. The field equations reduce to three-dimensional Einstein equations and the solution has constant Ricci tensor. We briefly discuss the emergence of non-Ricci flat solutions when spin is introduced.
Quasi-topological gravity is a new gravitational theory including curvature-cubed interactions and for which exact black hole solutions were constructed. In a holographic framework, classical quasi-topological gravity can be thought to be dual to the large $N_c$ limit of some non-supersymmetric but conformal gauge theory. We establish various elements of the AdS/CFT dictionary for this duality. This allows us to infer physical constraints on the couplings in the gravitational theory. Further we use holography to investigate hydrodynamic aspects of the dual gauge theory. In particular, we find …
We discuss a topological reason why global symmetries are not conserved in quantum gravity, at least when the symmetry comes from compactification of a higher form symmetry. The mechanism is purely topological and does not require any explicit breaking term in the UV Lagrangian. Local current conservation does not imply global charge conservation in a sum over geometries in the path integral. We explicitly consider the shift symmetry of an axion-like field which originates from the compactification of a $p$-form gauge field. Our topological construction is motivated by the brane/black-brane co…
In this paper we show that the gravitational field equations of $(n+1)$% -dimensional topological black holes with constant horizon curvature, in cubic and quartic quasi-topological gravity, can be recast in the form of the first law of thermodynamics, $dE=TdS-PdV$, at the black hole horizon. This procedure leads to extract an expression for the horizon entropy as well as the energy (mass) in terms of the horizon radius, which coincide exactly with those obtained in quasi-topological gravity by solving the field equations and using the Wald's method. We also argue that this approach is powerfu…
We derive the black hole solutions with horizons of non-trivial topology and investigate their properties in the framework of an approach to quantum gravity being an extension of Bohm's formulation of quantum mechanics. The solutions we found tend asymptotically (for large $r$) to topological black holes. We also analyze the thermodynamics of these space-times.
We study spherically symmetric solutions of a four-dimensional theory of gravity with a topological action, which was constructed as a Yang-Mills theory of the Poincaré group and can be considered a generalization to higher dimensions of well-known two-dimensional models. We also discuss the perturbative degrees of freedom and the properties of the theory under conformal transformations.
We consider a Dirac field coupled minimally to the Mielke-Baekler model of gravity and investigate cosmological solutions in three dimensions. We arrive at a family of solutions which exists even in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant.
In this paper, we construct the exact solutions of Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in the presence of quartic quasi-topological gravity. we obtain the thermodynamics and conserved quantities of the solutions and check the first law of thermodynamics. In studying the physical properties of the solutions, we consider asymptotically Ads, dS and flat solutions of Reissner-Nordstrom black hole in quartic quasi-topological gravity and compare them with Einstein and third-order quasi-topological gravities. we also investigate the thermal stability of the solutions that we show the thermal stability ar…
We present a complete quantization of Lorentzian D=1+2 gravity with cosmological constant, coupled to a set of topological matter fields. The approach of Loop Quantum Gravity is used thanks to a partial gauge fixing leaving a residual gauge invariance under a compact semi-simple gauge group, namely Spin(4) = SU(2) x SU(2). A pair of quantum observables is constructed, which are non-trivial despite of being null at the classical level.
We examine the relationship between covariant and canonical (Ashtekar/Rovelli/Smolin) loop variables in the context of BF type topological field theories in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions, with respective gauge groups SO(2,1) and SO(3,1). The latter model can be considered as the simplest topological gravity theory in 3+1 dimensions. We carry out the canonical quantization of this model in both the connection and loop representations, for the two spatial topologies $T^3$ and $S^2\times S^1$.
The Lagrangian derivation of the Equations of Motion for topological static spherically symmetric metrics in $\mathcal F (R,G)$-modified gravity is presented and the related solutions are discussed. In particular, a new topological solution for the model $\mathcal F (R,G)=R+\sqrt{G}$ is found. The black hole solutions and the First Law of thermodynamic are analyzed. Furthermore, the coupling with electromagnetic field is also considered and a Maxwell solution is derived.
The physics of quantum gravity is discussed within the framework of topological quantum field theory. Some of the principles are illustrated with examples taken from theories in which space-time is three dimensional.
Spherically symmetric static topological black hole solutions associated with some extended higher order gravitational models in the presence of a Maxwell-field are derived by means of simple Lagrangian method, based on spherically symmetric reduction. Some new topological black hole solutions are presented and the validity of the First Law is investigated, and in these cases an expression for the energy is provided.
Topological gravity is the reduction of Einstein's theory to spacetimes with vanishing curvature, but with global degrees of freedom related to the topology of the universe. We present an exact Hamiltonian lattice theory for topological gravity, which admits translations of the lattice sites as a gauge symmetry. There are additional symmetries, not present in Einstein's theory, which kill the local degrees of freedom. We show that these symmetries can be fixed by choosing a gauge where the torsion is equal to zero. In this gauge, the theory describes flat space-times. We propose two methods to…
We study the canonical structure of three-dimensional topologically massive gravity with a cosmological constant, using the full power of Dirac's method for constrained Hamiltonian systems. It is found that the dimension of the physical phase space is two per spacetime point, which corresponds to a single Lagrangian degree of freedom. The analysis of the AdS asymptotic region reveals a remarkable relation to 3D gravity with torsion: in the limit of vanishing torsion, the conserved charges and asymptotic symmetries of the two theories become identical.
We investigate the black hole solution to (2+1)-dimensional gravity coupled to topological matter, with a vanishing cosmological constant. We calculate the total energy, angular momentum and entropy of the black hole in this model and compare with results obtained in Einstein gravity. We find that the theory with topological matter reverses the identification of energy and angular momentum with the parameters in the metric, compared with general relativity, and that the entropy is determined by the circumference of the inner rather than the outer horizon. We speculate that this results from th…
In this paper, quartic quasi-topological black holes in the presence of a nonlinear electromagnetic Born-Infeld field is presented. By using the metric parameters, the charged black hole solutions of quasi-topological Born-Infeld gravity is considered. The thermodynamics of these black holes are investigated and I show that the thermodynamics and conserved quantities verify the first law of thermodynamics. I also introduce the thermodynamics of asymptotically AdS rotating black branes with flat horizon of these class of solutions and I calculate the finite action by use of the counterterm meth…
In this work we consider a model for gravity in 4-dimensional space-time originally proposed by A. Chamseddine which may be derived by a 5-dimensional Chern-Simons theory. Its topological origin makes it an interesting candidate for an easier quantization, e.g., in loop quantization framework. The present work is dedicated to classical physical consequences and canonical analysis of the model. Cosmological solutions as well as wave-like solutions were obtained and compared with the corresponding Einstein's General Relativity with cosmological constant.
