4 research outputs found
Gravity with more or less gauging
General relativity is usually formulated as a theory with gauge invariance under the diffeomorphism group, but there is a 'dilaton' formulation where it is in addition invariant under Weyl transformations, and a 'unimodular' formulation where it is only invariant under the smaller group of special diffeomorphisms. Other formulations with the same number of gauge generators, but a different gauge algebra, also exist. These different formulations provide examples of what we call 'inessential gauge invariance', 'symmetry trading' and 'linking theories'; they are locally equivalent, but may differ when global properties of the solutions are considered. We discuss these notions in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism
Path integral of unimodular gravity
We compute the one-loop effective action in unimodular gravity, starting from two different classical formulations of the theory. We find that the effective action is the same in both cases, and agrees with the one of general relativity