• Open Access

Unitary Extension of Exotic Massive 3D Gravity from Bigravity

Mehmet Ozkan, Yi Pang, and Utku Zorba
Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 031303 – Published 17 July 2019

Abstract

We obtain a new 3D gravity model from two copies of parity-odd Einstein-Cartan theories. Using Hamiltonian analysis, we demonstrate that the only local degrees of freedom are two massive spin-2 modes. Unitarity of the model in anti–de Sitter and Minkowski backgrounds can be satisfied for vast choices of the parameters without fine-tuning. The recent “exotic massive 3D gravity” model arises as a limiting case of the new model. We also show that there exist trajectories on the parameter space of the new model which cross the boundary between unitary and nonunitary regions. At the crossing point, one massive graviton decouples resulting in a unitary model with just one bulk degree of freedom but two positive central charges at odds with the usual expectation that the critical model has at least one vanishing central charge. Given the fact that a suitable nonrelativistic version of bigravity has been used as an effective theory for gapped spin-2 fractional quantum Hall states, our model may have interesting applications in condensed matter physics.

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  • Received 8 May 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.031303

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Mehmet Ozkan1,*, Yi Pang2,†, and Utku Zorba1,‡

  • 1Department of Physics, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak 34469, Istanbul, Turkey
  • 2Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom

  • *ozkanmehm@itu.edu.tr
  • Yi.Pang@maths.ox.ac.uk
  • zorba@itu.edu.tr

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Issue

Vol. 123, Iss. 3 — 19 July 2019

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