10–13 Mar 2020
University of Granada
Europe/Madrid timezone

Ghosts in metric-affine higher order curvature gravity

10 Mar 2020, 15:00
2h
Central Hall - Faculty of Science ((main building))

Central Hall - Faculty of Science

(main building)

Speaker

Adrià Delhom I Latorre (University of Valencia and IFIC)

Description

We disprove the widespread belief that higher order curvature theories of gravity in the metricaffine formalism are generally ghost-free. This is clarified by considering a sub-class of theories constructed only with the Ricci tensor and showing that the non-projectively invariant sector propagates ghost-like degrees of freedom. We also explain how these pathologies can be avoided either by imposing a projective symmetry or additional constraints in the gravity sector. Our results put forward that higher order curvature gravity theories generally remain pathological in the metricaffine (and hybrid) formalisms and highlight the key importance of the projective symmetry and/or additional constraints for their physical viability and, by extension, of general metric-affine theories.

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