Is there any Trinity of Gravity, to start with?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Golovnev, Alexey
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Golovnev, Alexey
author_facet Golovnev, Alexey
contents In recent years, it has been rather fashionable to talk about geometric trinity of gravity. The main idea is that one can formally present the gravity equations in different terms, those of either torsion or nonmetricity instead of curvature. It starts from a very erroneous claim that the Levi-Civita connection, and therefore the (pseudo-)Riemannian geometry itself, are nothing but an arbitrary choice. The point is that, as long as we admit the need of having a metric for describing gravity, the standard approach does not involve any additional independent geometric structures on top of that. At the same time, any other metric-affine model does go for genuinely new stuff. In particular, the celebrated teleparallel framework introduces a notion of yet another parallel transport which is flat. It gives us curious new ways of modifying gravity, even though very often quite problematic. However, in GR-equivalent models, we only get a new language for describing the same physics, in terms of absolutely unobservable and unpredictable geometrical inventions. For sure, one can always safely create novel constructions which do not influence the physical equations of motion, but in itself it does not make much sense and blatantly goes against the Occam's razor.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_14089
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is there any Trinity of Gravity, to start with?
Golovnev, Alexey
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Mathematical Physics
History and Philosophy of Physics
In recent years, it has been rather fashionable to talk about geometric trinity of gravity. The main idea is that one can formally present the gravity equations in different terms, those of either torsion or nonmetricity instead of curvature. It starts from a very erroneous claim that the Levi-Civita connection, and therefore the (pseudo-)Riemannian geometry itself, are nothing but an arbitrary choice. The point is that, as long as we admit the need of having a metric for describing gravity, the standard approach does not involve any additional independent geometric structures on top of that. At the same time, any other metric-affine model does go for genuinely new stuff. In particular, the celebrated teleparallel framework introduces a notion of yet another parallel transport which is flat. It gives us curious new ways of modifying gravity, even though very often quite problematic. However, in GR-equivalent models, we only get a new language for describing the same physics, in terms of absolutely unobservable and unpredictable geometrical inventions. For sure, one can always safely create novel constructions which do not influence the physical equations of motion, but in itself it does not make much sense and blatantly goes against the Occam's razor.
title Is there any Trinity of Gravity, to start with?
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Mathematical Physics
History and Philosophy of Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14089