Critical higher order gravities in higher dimensions

Abstract

We show that the higher order gravity model proposed by Meissner and Olechowski has a graviton mode, a massive spin-two excitation and no scalar mode in a maximally symmetric spacetime; therefore, by choosing the coefficients, we can construct a Lagrangian for `critical gravity' from higher order terms of curvatures in higher dimensions. We also give a comment on construction of the theory with multi-criticality in higher order gravities.