Decoupling and Reduction in Chern-Simons Modified Gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates conditions under which Chern-Simons modified gravity simplifies to general relativity or topologically massive gravity, depending on spacetime symmetries and scalar field properties.

Contribution

It identifies specific geometric and scalar field conditions that lead to decoupling of equations and reduction to known gravity theories in four and three dimensions.

Findings

Equations decouple into Einstein and Cotton parts under certain symmetries.

Chern-Simons gravity reduces to topologically massive gravity when conditions are met.

Reduction to known theories depends on the cosmological constant and scalar field alignment.

Abstract

We show that for four-dimensional spacetimes with a non-null hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector and for a Chern-Simons (CS) background (non-dynamical) scalar field, which is constant along the Killing vector, the source-free equations of CS modified gravity decouple into their Einstein and Cotton constituents. Thus, the model supports only general relativity solutions. We also show that, when the cosmological constant vanishes and the gradient of the CS scalar field is parallel to the non-null hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector of constant length, CS modified gravity reduces to topologically massive gravity in three dimensions. Meanwhile, with the cosmological constant such a reduction requires an appropriate source term for CS modified gravity.