Nonlinear dynamics of parity-even tricritical gravity in three and four dimensions

Abstract

Recently proposed "multicritical" higher-derivative gravities in Anti de Sitter space carry logarithmic representations of the Anti de Sitter isometry group. While generically non-unitary already at the quadratic, free-theory level, in special cases these theories admit a unitary subspace. The simplest example of such behavior is "tricritical" gravity. In this paper, we extend the study of parity-even tricritical gravity in d = 3, 4 to the first nonlinear order. We show that the would-be unitary subspace suffers from a linearization instability and is absent in the full non-linear theory.