Searching for S-duality in Gravitation

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility of S-duality analogues in gravity theories, focusing on MacDowell-Mansouri gauge theory and dimensional reductions to relate to Chern-Simons gravity and its S-dual.

Contribution

It investigates S-duality in gravity theories, particularly through dimensional reduction of four-dimensional topological gravity to three-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity, offering new insights into dualities beyond supersymmetry.

Findings

S-duality analogues can be formulated in gravity theories.

Dimensional reduction links four-dimensional topological gravity to 3D Chern-Simons gravity.

The approach provides a framework for exploring dualities in non-supersymmetric contexts.

Abstract

We overview some attempts to find S-duality analogues of non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, in the context of gravity theories. The case of MacDowell-Mansouri gauge theory of gravity is discussed. Three-dimensional dimensional reductions from the topological gravitational sector in four dimensions, enable to recuperate the 2+1 Chern-Simons gravity and the corresponding S-dual theory, from the notion of self-duality in the four-dimensional theory.