On-shell symmetries

We define on-shell symmetries and characterize them for Lagrangian systems. The terms appearing in the variation of the Poincare'-Cartan form, which vanish because of field equations, are found to be strongly constrained if the space of solutions has to be preserved. The behaviour with respect to solution dragging is also investigated in order to discuss relations with the theory of internal symmetries of a PDE.Comment: 13 page

Further Extended Theories of Gravitation: Part I

We shall here propose a class of relativistic theories of gravitation, based on a foundational paper of Ehlers Pirani and Schild (EPS).All "extended theories of gravitation" (also known as f(R) theories) in Palatini formalism are shown to belong to this class. In a forthcoming paper we shall show that this class of theories contains other more general examples. EPS framework helps in the interpretation and solution of these models that however have exotic behaviours even compared to f(R) theories.Comment: 10 pages. Some refs adde

A constructive approach to bundles of geometric objects on a differentiable manifold

A constructive approach to bundles of geometric objects of finite rank on a differentiable manifold is proposed, whereby the standard techniques of fiber bundle theory are extensively used. Both the point of view of transition functions (here directly constructed from the jets of local diffeomorphisms of the basis manifold) and that of principal fiber bundles are developed in detail. These, together with the absence of any reference to the current functorial approach, provide a natural clue from the point of view of physical applications. Several examples are discussed. In the last section the functorial approach is also presented in a constructive way, and the Lie derivative of a field of geometric objects is defined. \ua9 1983 American Institute of Physics

Universality of Einstein Equations for the Ricci Squared Lagrangians

It has been recently shown that, in the first order (Palatini) formalism, there is universality of Einstein equations and Komar energy-momentum complex, in the sense that for a generic nonlinear Lagrangian depending only on the scalar curvature of a metric and a torsionless connection one always gets Einstein equations and Komar's expression for the energy-momentum complex. In this paper a similar analysis (also in the framework of the first order formalism) is performed for all nonlinear Lagrangians depending on the (symmetrized) Ricci square invariant. The main result is that the universality of Einstein equations and Komar energy-momentum complex also extends to this case (modulo a conformal transformation of the metric).Comment: 21 pages, Late

About Boundary Terms in Higher Order Theories

It is shown that when in a higher order variational principle one fixes fields at the boundary leaving the field derivatives unconstrained, then the variational principle (in particular the solution space) is not invariant with respect to the addition of boundary terms to the action, as it happens instead when the correct procedure is applied. Examples are considered to show how leaving derivatives of fields unconstrained affects the physical interpretation of the model. This is justified in particularl by the need of clarifying the issue for the purpose of applications to relativistic gravitational theories, where a bit of confusion still exists. On the contrary, as it is well known for variational principles of order k, if one fixes variables together with their derivatives (up to order k-1) on the boundary then boundary terms leave solution space invariant.Comment: 7 page

Entropy of Self-Gravitating Systems from Holst's Lagrangian

We shall prove here that conservation laws from Holst's Lagrangian, often used in LQG, do not agree with the corresponding conservation laws in standard GR. Nevertheless, these differences vanish on-shell, i.e. along solutions, so that they eventually define the same classical conserved quantities. Accordingly, they define in particular the same entropy of solutions, and the standard law S=A/4 is reproduced for systems described by Holst's Lagragian. This provides the classical support to the computation usually done in LQG for the entropy of black holes which is in turn used to fix the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.Comment: 4 pages, no figures; just acknowledgments change