Carlos Scarinci

We give a unified description of tetrahedra with lightlike faces in 3d anti-de Sitter, de Sitter and Minkowski spaces and of their duals in 3d anti-de Sitter, hyperbolic and half-pipe spaces. We show that both types of tetrahedra are determined by a generalized cross-ratio with values in a commutative 2d real algebra that generalizes the complex numbers. Equivalently, tetrahedra with lightlike faces are determined by a pair of edge lengths and their duals by a pair of dihedral angles. We prove that the dual tetrahedra are precisely the generalized ideal tetrahedra introduced by Danciger. Finally, we compute the volumes of both types of tetrahedra as functions of their edge lengths or dihedral angles, obtaining generalizations of the Milnor–Lobachevsky volume formula of ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra.

General relativity in dimension n = p + q can be formulated as a gauge theory for the conformal group S O p + 1 , q + 1 , along with an additional field reducing the structure group down to the Poincaré group I S O p , q . In this paper, we propose a new variational principle for Einstein geometry which realizes this fact. Importantly, as opposed to previous treatments in the literature, our action functional gives first order field equations and does not require supplementary constraints on gauge fields, such as torsion-freeness. Our approach is based on the ‘first order formulation’ of conformal tractor geometry. Accordingly, it provides a straightforward variational derivation of the tractor version of the Einstein equation. To achieve this, we review the standard theory of tractor geometry with a gauge theory perspective, defining the tractor bundle a priori in terms of an abstract principal bundle and providing an identification with the standard conformal tractor bundle via a dynamical soldering form. This can also be seen as a generalization of the so called Cartan–Palatini formulation of general relativity in which the ‘internal’ orthogonal group S O p , q is extended to an appropriate parabolic subgroup P ⊂ S O p + 1 , q + 1 of the conformal group.

We give a unified description of tetrahedra with lightlike faces in 3d anti-de Sitter, de Sitter and Minkowski spaces and of their duals in 3d anti-de Sitter, hyperbolic and half-pipe spaces. We show that both types of tetrahedra are determined by a generalized cross-ratio with values in a commutative 2d real algebra that generalizes the complex numbers. Equivalently, tetrahedra with lightlike faces are determined by a pair of edge lengths and their duals by a pair of dihedral angles. We prove that the dual tetrahedra are precisely the generalized ideal tetrahedra introduced by Danciger. Finally, we compute the volumes of both types of tetrahedra as functions of their edge lengths or dihedral angles, obtaining generalizations of the Milnor-Lobachevsky volume formula of ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra.

We show that 3D gravity, in its pure connection formulation, admits a natural 6D interpretation. The 3D field equations for the connection are equivalent to 6D Hitchin equations for the Chern–Simons 3-form in the total space of the principal bundle over the 3-dimensional base. Turning this construction around one gets an explanation of why the pure connection formulation of 3D gravity exists. More generally, we interpret 3D gravity as the dimensional reduction of the 6D Hitchin theory. To this end, we show that any S U ( 2 ) invariant closed 3-form in the total space of the principal S U ( 2 ) bundle can be parametrised by a connection together with a 2-form field on the base. The dimensional reduction of the 6D Hitchin theory then gives rise to 3D gravity coupled to a topological 2-form field.

General relativity in four-dimensions can be equivalently described as a dynamical theory of -connections rather than metrics. We introduce the notion of asymptotically hyperbolic connections, and work out an analogue of the Fefferman–Graham expansion in the language of connections. As in the metric setup, one can solve the arising 'evolution' equations order by order in the expansion in powers of the radial coordinate. The solution in the connection setting is arguably simpler, and very straightforward algebraic manipulations allow one to see how the unconstrained by Einstein equations 'stress–energy tensor' appears at third order in the expansion. Another interesting feature of the connection formulation is that the 'counter terms' required in the computation of the renormalised volume all combine into the Chern–Simons functional of the restriction of the connection to the boundary. As the Chern–Simons invariant is only defined modulo large gauge transformations, the requirement that the path integral over asymptotically hyperbolic connections is well-defined requires the cosmological constant to be quantised. Finally, in the connection setting one can deform the 4D Einstein condition in an interesting way, and we show that asymptotically hyperbolic connection expansion is universal and valid for any of the deformed theories.