Abstract
Inspired by the teleparallel formulation of general relativity, whose Lagrangian is the torsion invariant , we have constructed the teleparallel equivalent of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in arbitrary dimensions. Without imposing the Weitzenböck connection, we have extracted the torsion invariant , equivalent (up to boundary terms) to the Gauss-Bonnet term . is constructed by the vielbein and the connection, it contains quartic powers of the torsion tensor, it is diffeomorphism and Lorentz invariant, and in four dimensions it reduces to a topological invariant as expected. Imposing the Weitzenböck connection, depends only on the vielbein, and this allows us to consider a novel class of modified gravity theories based on , which is not spanned by the class of theories, nor by the class of curvature modified gravity. Finally, varying the action we extract the equations of motion for gravity.
- Received 10 April 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.084044
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