https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00210-4
Regular Article
From topological to topologically massive gravity through the gauge principle
Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, CP 231, Campus Plaine, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
* e-mail: giandomenico.palumbo@ulb.ac.be
Received:
5
December
2019
Accepted:
12
January
2020
Published online:
28
January
2020
It is well known that three-dimensional Einstein’s gravity without matter is topological, i.e. it does not have local propagating degrees of freedom. The main result of this work is to show that dynamics in the gravitational sector can be induced by employing the gauge principle on the matter sector. This is described by a non-dynamical fermion model that supports a global symmetry. By gauging this symmetry, a vector–spinor field is added to the original action to preserve the local gauge invariance. By integrating out this spin-3/2 field, we obtain a gravitational Chern–Simons term that gives rise to local propagating degrees of freedom in the gravitational sector. This is defined, after the gauging, by topologically massive gravity.
© Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF) and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature, 2020
