Tahsin Cagri Sisman

AdS Waves as Exact Solutions to Quadratic Gravity

We give an exact solution of the quadratic gravity in D dimensions. The solution is a plane-fronted wave metric with a cosmological constant. This metric solves not only the full quadratic gravity field equations but also the linearized ones which include the linearized equations of the recently found critical gravity. A subset of the solutions change the asymptotic structure of the anti-de Sitter space due to their logarithmic behavior.

c-functions in the Born-Infeld extended New Massive Gravity

We derive and study the equations of motion of the Born-Infeld extension of new massive gravity for globally and asymptotically (anti-)de Sitter spaces, and show that the assumptions of the null-energy condition and holography (that bounds the c-function) lead to two simple c-functions, one of which is equivalent to the c-function of Einsteins gravity. We also show that, at the fixed point, the c-function gives the central charge of the Virasoro algebra and the coefficient of the Weyl anomaly up to a constant.

Unitarity analysis of general Born-Infeld gravity theories

We develop techniques of analyzing the unitarity of general Born-Infeld gravity actions in D-dimensional spacetimes. The determinantal form of the action allows us to find a compact expression quadratic in the metric fluctuations around constant curvature backgrounds. This is highly nontrivial since for the Bom-Infeld actions, in principle, infinitely many terms in the curvature expansion should contribute to the quadratic action in the metric fluctuations around constant curvature backgrounds, which would render the unitarity analysis intractable. Moreover in even dimensions, unitarity of the theory depends only on finite number of terms built from the powers of the curvature tensor. We apply our techniques to some four-dimensional examples.

Canonical Structure of Higher Derivative Gravity in 3D

We give an explicitly gauge-invariant canonical analysis of linearized quadratic gravity theories in three dimensions for both flat and de Sitter backgrounds. In flat backgrounds, we also study the effects of the gravitational Chern-Simons term, include the sources, and compute the weak field limit as well as scattering between spinning massive particles.

New Exact Solutions of Quadratic Curvature Gravity

It is a known fact that the Kerr-Schild type solutions in general relativity satisfy both exact and linearized Einstein field equations. We show that this property remains valid also for a special class of the Kerr-Schild metrics in arbitrary dimensions in generic quadratic curvature theory. In addition to the antide Sitter (AdS) wave (or Siklos) metric which represents plane waves in an AdS background, we present here a new exact solution, in this class, to the quadratic gravity in D dimensions which represents a spherical wave in an AdS background. The solution is a special case of the Kundt metrics belonging to spacetimes with constant curvature invariants.

Born-Infeld Gravity with a Massless Graviton in Four Dimensions

We construct Born-Infeld (BI) type gravity theories which describe tree-level unitary (non-ghost and non-tachyonic) massless spin-2 modes around their maximally symmetric vacua in four dimensions. Building unitary BI actions around flat vacuum is straightforward; but, this is a complicated task around (anti)-de Sitter backgrounds. In this work, we solve the issue and give details of constructing perturbatively viable determinantal BI theories. It is interesting that the Gauss-Bonnet combination, which is a total derivative in four dimensions, plays an important role in the construction of viable BI theories.

AdS-plane wave and

We construct the anti–de Sitter-plane wave solutions of generic gravity theory built on the arbitrary powers of the Riemann tensor and its derivatives in analogy with the pp-wave solutions. In constructing the wave solutions of the generic theory, we show that the most general two-tensor built from the Riemann tensor and its derivatives can bewritten in terms of the traceless Ricci tensor. Quadratic gravity theory plays a major role; therefore, we revisit the wave solutions in this theory. As examples of our general formalism, we work out the six-dimensional conformal gravity and its nonconformal deformation as well as the tricritical gravity, the Lanczos-Lovelock theory, and string-generated cubic curvature theory.

pp

We construct all the bulk and boundary unitary cubic curvature parity invariant gravity theories in three dimensions in (anti)-de Sitter spaces. For bulk unitarity, our construction is based on the principle that the free theory of the cubic curvature theory reduces to one of the three known unitary theories which are the cosmological Einstein-Hilbert theory, the quadratic theory of the scalar curvature, or the new massive gravity (NMG). Bulk and boundary unitarity in NMG is in conflict; therefore, cubic theories that are unitary both in the bulk and on the boundary have free theories that reduce to the other two alternatives. We also study the unitarity of the Born-Infeld extensions of NMG to all orders in curvature.

-wave solutions of generic gravity theories

We construct an n-dimensional Born-Infeld type gravity theory that has the same properties as Einstein’s gravity in terms of the vacuum and particle content: Namely, the theory has a unique viable vacuum (maximally symmetric solution) and a single massless unitary spin-2 graviton about this vacuum. The BI gravity, in some sense, is the most natural, minimal generalization of Einstein’s gravity with a better UV behavior, and hence, is a potentially viable proposal for low energy quantum gravity. The Gauss-Bonnet combination plays a non-trivial role in the construction of the theory. As an extreme example, we consider the infinite dimensional limit where an interesting exponential gravity arises.

All bulk and boundary unitary cubic curvature theories in three dimensions

We find the explicit forms of the anti-de Sitter plane, anti-de Sitter spherical, and pp waves that solve both the linearized and exact field equations of the most general higher derivative gravity theory in three dimensions. As a sub-class, we work out the six derivative theory and the critical version of it where the masses of the two spin-2 excitations vanish and the spin-0 excitations decouple.