Andrés Goya

The partition function of three-dimensional quantum gravity has been argued to be one-loop exact. Here, we verify the vanishing of higher orders in perturbation theory by explicit computation in the second-order metric formulation at three loops. The number of one-particle irreducible Feynman diagrams involving both gravitons and ghosts turns out to be 17. Using dimensional regularization, we solve all the diagrams. At two loops, we find that all such diagrams vanish separately after regularization. At three loops, in contrast, a series of remarkable cancellations between different diagrams takes place, with nine diagrams beautifully conspiring to yield a vanishing result. Our techniques are suitable to be applied to higher loops as well as to similar computations in higher dimensions.

We continue the study of the one-loop partition function of AdS₃ gravity with focus on the square-integrability condition on the fluctuating fields. In a previous work we found that the Brown-Henneaux boundary conditions follow directly from the L² condition. Here we rederive the partition function as a ratio of Laplacian determinants by performing a suitable decomposition of the metric fluctuations. We pay special attention to the asymptotics of the fields appearing in the partition function. We also show that in the usual computation using ghost fields for the de Donder gauge, such gauge condition is accessible precisely for square-integrable ghost fields. Finally, we compute the spectrum of the relevant Laplacians in thermal AdS₃, in particular noticing that there are no isolated eigenvalues, only essential spectrum. This last result supports the analytic continuation approach of David, Gaberdiel and Gopakumar. The purely essential spectra found are consistent with the independent results of Lee and Delay of the essential spectrum of the TT rank-2 tensor Lichnerowickz Laplacian on asymptotically hyperbolic spaces.

There has been renewed interest in the path-integral computation of the partition function of AdS₃ gravity, both in the metric and Chern-Simons formulations. The one-loop partition function around Euclidean AdS₃ turns out to be given by the vacuum character of Virasoro group. This stems from the work of Brown and Henneaux (BH) who showed that, in AdS₃ gravity with sensible asymptotic boundary conditions, an infinite group of (improper) diffeomorphisms arises which acts canonically on phase space as two independent Virasoro symmetries. The gauge group turns out to be composed of so-called “proper” diffeomorphisms which approach the identity at infinity fast enough. However, it is sometimes far from evident to identify where BH boundary conditions enter in the path integral, and much more difficult to see how the improper diffeomorphisms are left out of the gauge group. In particular, in the metric formulation, Giombi, Maloney and Yin obtained the one-loop partition function around thermal AdS₃ resorting to the heat kernel method to compute the determinants coming from the path integral. Here we identify how BH boundary conditions follow naturally from the usual requirement of square-integrability of the metric perturbations. Also, and equally relevant, we clarify how the quotient by only proper diffeomorphisms is implemented, promoting the improper diffeomorphisms to symmetries in the path integral. Our strategy is general enough to apply to other approaches where square integrability is assumed. Finally, we show that square integrability implies that the asymptotic symmetries in higher dimensional AdS gravity are just isometries.

There has been renewed interest in the path-integral computation of the partition function of AdS3 gravity, both in the metric and Chern-Simons formulations. The one-loop partition function around Euclidean AdS3 turns out to be given by the vacuum character of Virasoro group. This stems from the work of Brown and Henneaux (BH) who showed that, in AdS3 gravity with sensible asymptotic boundary conditions, an infinite group of (improper) diffeomorphisms arises which acts canonically on phase space as two independent Virasoro symmetries. The gauge group turns out to be composed of so-called ``proper'' diffeomorphisms which approach the identity at infinity fast enough. However, it is sometimes far from evident to identify where BH boundary conditions enter in the path integral, and much more difficult to see how the improper diffeomorphisms are left out of the gauge group. In particular, in the metric formulation, Giombi, Maloney and Yin obtained the one-loop partition function around thermal AdS3 resorting to the heat kernel method to compute the determinants coming from the path integral. Here we identify how BH boundary conditions follow naturally from the usual requirement of square-integrability of the metric perturbations. Also, and equally relevant, we clarify how the quotient by only proper diffeomorphisms is implemented, promoting the improper diffeomorphisms to symmetries in the path integral. Our strategy is general enough to apply to other approaches where square integrability is assumed. Finally, we show that square integrability implies that the asymptotic symmetries in higher dimensional AdS gravity are just isometries.

Exotic Massive 3D Gravity (EMG) is a higher order generalization of Topologically Massive Gravity. As in other theories of this sort, the conserved charges associated to the asymptotic diffeomorphisms that preserve the boundary conditions in AdS3 spacetime span two copies of the Virasoro algebra with non-vanishing central charges. Here, we discuss the values of these central charges and the corresponding conformal anomaly in relation to the phase space of the theory.

Lovelock theory provides a tractable model of higher-curvature gravity in which several questions can be studied analytically. This is the reason why, in the last years, this theory has become the favorite arena to study the effects of higher-curvature terms in the context of AdS/CFT correspondence. Lovelock theory also admits extensions that permit to accommodate matter coupled to gravity in a non-minimal way. In this setup, problems such as the backreaction of matter on the black hole geometry can also be solved exactly. In this paper, we study the thermodynamics of black holes in theories of gravity of this type, which include both higher-curvature terms, U(1) gauge fields, and conformal couplings with matter fields in D dimensions. These charged black hole solutions exhibit a backreacting scalar field configuration that is regular everywhere outside and on the horizon, and may exist both in asymptotically flat and asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spaces. We work out explicitly the boundary action for this theory, which renders the variational problem well-posed and suffices to regularize the Euclidean action in AdS. We also discuss several interrelated properties of the theory, such as its duality symmetry under field redefinition and how it acts on black holes and gravitational wave solutions.