Topological symmetry-restored phase of gravity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a topological quantum field theory phase for four-dimensional gravity that can generate General Relativity and Lovelock-Cartan theories, revealing a new symmetry-breaking mechanism for gravity's degrees of freedom.

Contribution

It proposes a novel topological phase of gravity capable of producing a wide class of gravitational theories through symmetry breaking.

Findings

Demonstrates the topological phase generates General Relativity and Lovelock-Cartan theories.

Establishes quantum stability of the model to all orders in perturbation theory.

Develops an extended (anti-)self-dual Landau gauge for evaluating Ward identities and counterterms.

Abstract

In this work, we propose a topological quantum field theory phase for four-dimensional gravity. We show it is able to generate, not only General Relativity, but the whole family of Lovelock-Cartan theories of gravity. This is accomplished due to the existence of a topological symmetry which, when explicitly broken via the introduction of a mass scale, releases the local degrees of freedom of gravity. Additionally, we introduce an extended notion of the (anti-)self-dual Landau gauge conditions to evaluate the Ward identities, counterterms, and prove the quantum stability of the model, to all orders in perturbation theory, using the algebraic renormalization technique.