Topologically Massive Gravity Research Articles

Solutions with pure radiation and gyratons in 3D massive gravity theories

We find exact solutions of topologically massive gravity (TMG) and new massive gravity (NMG) in 2 + 1 dimensions (3D) with an arbitrary cosmological constant, pure radiation, and gyratons, i.e. with possibly non-zero T uu and T ux in canonical coordinates. Since any ‘reasonable’ geometry in 3D (i.e. admitting a null geodesic congruence) is either expanding Robinson–Trautman ( Θ≠0 ) or Kundt ( Θ=0 ), we focus on these two classes. Assuming expansions Θ=1/r (‘GR-like’ Robinson–Trautman) or Θ=0 (general Kundt), we systematically integrate the field equations of TMG and NMG and identify new classes of exact solutions. The case of NMG contains an additional assumption of g ux being quadratic in r, which is automatically enforced in TMG as well as in 3D GR. In each case, we reduce the field equations as much as possible and identify new classes of solutions. We also discuss various special subclasses and study some explicit solutions.

The action of geometric entropy in topologically massive gravity

Due to the presence of a gravitational anomaly in topologically massive gravity (TMG), the geometric entropy is no longer simply the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi (HRT) area; instead, it is given by the HRT area plus an anomalous contribution. We study the action of this geometric entropy on the covariant phase space of classical solutions for TMG with matter fields whose action is algebraic in the metric. The result agrees precisely with the action of HRT area operators in Einstein-Hilbert gravity given in [8], i.e., it is a boundary-condition-preserving kink transformation. Furthermore, we show our result to be consistent with direct computations of semiclassical commutators of geometric entropies in pure TMG spacetimes asymptotic to planar AdS, as computed in [21].

Null surface thermodynamics in topologically massive gravity

We study three dimensional topologically massive gravity (TMG) in presence of a generic codimension one null boundary. The existence of the boundary is accounted for by enlarging the Hilbert space of the theory by degrees of freedom which only reside at the boundary, the boundary degrees of freedom. The solution phase space of this theory in addition to bulk massive chiral gravitons of the TMG, involves boundary modes which are labeled by surface charges associated with large diffeomorphisms. We show boundary degrees of freedom obey a local thermodynamic description over the solution phase space, null surface thermodynamics, described by a local version of the first law, a local Gibbs–Duhem equation, and local zeroth law. Due to the expansion of the boundary and also the passage of the bulk mode through the boundary, our null surface thermodynamics describes an open boundary system that is generically out of thermal equilibrium.

Covariant entanglement wedge cross-section, balanced partial entanglement and gravitational anomalies

The balanced partial entanglement (BPE) was observed to give the reflected entropy and the entanglement wedge cross-section (EWCS) for various mixed states in different theories [1,2]. It can be calculated in different purifications, and is conjectured to be independent from purifications. In this paper we calculate the BPE and the EWCS in generic covariant scenarios in two-dimensional CFTs with and without gravitational anomalies, and find that they coincide with the reflected entropy. In covariant configurations we determine the partition for the purifying system with the help of the gravitational anomalies, and we extend our discussion to topological massive gravity (TMG). We give the first prescription to evaluate the entropy quantity associated to the EWCS beyond Einstein gravity, i.e. the correction to the EWCS from the Chern-Simons term in TMG. Apart from the gravity theory and geometry, further input from the mixed state should be taken into account.

Conservation and integrability in topological massive gravity

In this work, following the paper by Romain Ruzziconi and Céline Zwikel [4] we extend the questions of conservation, integrability and renormalization in asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter in three spacetime dimensions (AdS3) in Bondi gauge and in Einstein gravity to the theory of topological massive gravity. We construct the phase space and renormalize the divergences arising within the symplectic structure through a holographic renormalization procedure. We show that the charge expressions are finite, conserved (under the Dirichlet boundary conditions) and can be made integrable by using a particular slicing of the phase space. Then, we obtain the algebra of AdS3 boundary with a central charges the same as the Brown-Henneaux central charges.

Structure of Chern-Simons scattering amplitudes from topological equivalence theorem and double-copy

We study the mechanism of topological mass-generation for 3d Chern-Simons (CS) gauge theories, where the CS term can retain the gauge symmetry and make gauge boson topologically massive. Without CS term the 3d massless gauge boson has a single physical transverse polarization state, while adding the CS term converts it into a massive physical polarization state and conserves the total physical degrees of freedom. We formulate the mechanism of topological mass-generation at S-matrix level. For this, we propose and prove a Topological Equivalence Theorem (TET) which connects the N-point scattering amplitude of the gauge boson’s physical polarization states ( {A}_{mathrm{P}}^a ) to that of the transverse polarization states ( {A}_{mathrm{T}}^a ) under high energy expansion. We present a general 3d power counting method on the leading energy dependence of the scattering amplitudes in both topologically massive Yang-Mills (TMYM) and topologically massive gravity (TMG) theories. With these, we uncover a general energy cancellation mechanism for N -gauge boson scattering amplitudes which predicts the cancellation E4→ E4−N at tree level. Then, we compute the 4-gauge boson amplitudes of {A}_{mathrm{P}}^a -states and {A}_{mathrm{T}}^a -states, with which we explicitly demonstrate the TET and establish such energy cancellations for N = 4. We further extend the double-copy approach to reconstruct the massive 4-graviton amplitude of TMG from the massive 4-gauge boson amplitude of TMYM. With these, we uncover striking large energy cancellations in the 4-graviton amplitude: E12→ E1, and establish its correspondence to the leading energy cancellation E4→ E0in the 4-gauge boson amplitude of TMYM.

Flat limit chiral gravity in GMMG and EGMG

In this work we extend the holographic correspondence between flat space limit of chiral topological massive gravity and a specific unitary field theory to flat space limit of chiral general minimal massive gravity and chiral exotic general massive gravity. To check the conjecture, we compare the entropy and partition function of flat limit of BTZ black hole from viewpoint of both sides.

Phase transition between flat space cosmology and hot flat spacetimes in GMMG and EGMG models

Flat space cosmology (FSC) spacetimes are exact solutions of 3D gravity theories. In this work, we study phase transition between FSC spacetimes and hot flat spacetimes (HFS) in general minimal massive gravity and exotic general massive gravity. We show that similar to topological massive gravity the tunneling occurs between two spacetimes by comparing their free energies. We also obtain the corrections to the Bekenstein−Hawking entropy, and its effect on the phase transition is studied.

Chiral massive news: null boundary symmetries in topologically massive gravity

We study surface charges on a generic null boundary in three dimensional topological massive gravity (TMG). We construct the solution phase space which involves four independent functions over the two dimensional null boundary. One of these functions corresponds to the massive chiral propagating graviton mode of TMG. The other three correspond to three surface charges of the theory, two of which can always be made integrable, while the last one can become integrable only in the absence of the chiral massive graviton flux through the null boundary. As the null boundary symmetry algebra we obtain Heisenberg ⊕ Virasoro algebra with a central charge proportional to the gravitational Chern-Simons term of TMG. We also discuss that the flux of the chiral massive gravitons appears as the (Bondi) news through the null surface.

Quantum chaos in topologically massive gravity

We study quantum chaos of rotating BTZ black holes in Topologically Massive gravity (TMG). We discuss the relationship between chaos parameters including Lyapunov exponents and butterfly velocities from shock wave calculations of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) and from pole-skipping analysis. We find a partial match between pole-skipping and the OTOC results in the high temperature regime. We also find that the velocity bound puts a chaos constraint on the gravitational Chern-Simons coupling.

Spontaneously broken 3d Hietarinta/Maxwell Chern\u2013Simons theory and minimal massive gravity

We show that minimal massive 3d gravity (MMG) of (Bergshoeff et al. in Class Quantum Grav 31:145008, 2014), as well as the topological massive gravity, are particular cases of a more general ‘minimal massive gravity’ theory (with a single massive propagating mode) arising upon spontaneous breaking of a local symmetry in a Chern–Simons gravity based on a Hietarinta or Maxwell algebra. Similar to the MMG case, the requirements that the propagating massive mode is neither tachyon nor ghost and that the central charges of an asymptotic algebra associated with a boundary CFT are positive, impose restrictions on the range of the parameters of the theory.

Anomalous gravitation and its positivity from entanglement

We explore the emergence of gravitation from entanglement in holographic CFTs with gravitational anomalies. More specifically, the holographic correspondence between topologically massive gravity (TMG) with gravitational Chern-Simons term in the 3D bulk and its dual CFT with unbalanced left and right moving central charges on the 2D boundary, is studied from the quantum entanglement perspective. Using the first law of entanglement, we derive the holographic dictionary of the energy-momentum tensor in TMG, including the chiral case with logarithmic mode. Furthermore, we show that the linearized equation of motion of TMG can also be obtained from entanglement using the Wald-Tachikawa covariant phase space formalism. Finally, we identify a quasi-local gravitational energy in the entanglement wedge as the holographic dual of relative entropy in gravitationally anomalous CFTs. The positivity and monotonicity of relative entropy imply that such a gravitational energy should be positive definite and become larger when increasing the size of the entanglement wedge. These constraints from quantum information may be potentially used to discuss the UV inconsistent issues of TMG.

Complexity growth in minimal massive 3D gravity

We study the complexity growth by using complexity = action (CA) proposal in Minimal Massive 3D Gravity(MMG) model which is proposed for resolving the bulk-boundary clash problem of Topologically Massive Gravity(TMG). We observe that the rate of the complexity growth for BTZ black hole saturates the proposed bound by physical mass of the BTZ black hole in the MMG model, when the angular momentum parameter and the inner horizon of black hole goes to zero.

Hamiltonian structure of three-dimensional gravity in Vielbein formalism

Considering Chern-Simons like gravity theories in three dimensions as first order systems, we analyze the Hamiltonian structure of three theories Topological massive gravity, New massive gravity, and Zwei-Dreibein Gravity.We show that these systems demonstrate a new feature of the constrained systems in which a new kind of constraints emerge due to factorization of determinant of the matrix of Poisson brackets of constraints. We find the desired number of degrees of freedom as well as the generating functional of local Lorentz transformations and diffeomorphism through canonical structure of the system. We also compare the Hamiltonian structure of linearized version of the considered models with the original ones.

Complexity growth in massive gravity theories, the effects of chirality, and more

To study the effect of parity violation on the rate of complexity growth, by using ``$\text{complexity}=\text{action}$'' conjecture, we find the complexity growth rates in different solutions of the chiral theory of topologically massive gravity (TMG) and parity-preserving theory of new massive gravity (NMG). Using the results, one can see that decreasing the parameter $\ensuremath{\mu}$, which increases the effect of the Chern-Simons term and increases chirality, would increase the rate of growth of complexity. Also one can observe a stronger correlation between complexity growth and temperature rather than complexity growth and entropy. At the end we comment on the possible meaning of the deforming term of chiral Liouville action for the rate of complexity growth of warped conformal field theories in the tensor network renormalization picture.

Weyl and transverse diffeomorphism invariant spin-2 models in D=2+1

There are two covariant descriptions of massless spin-2 particles in D=3+1 via a symmetric rank-2 tensor: the linearized Einstein–Hilbert (LEH) theory and the Weyl plus transverse diffeomorphism (WTDIFF) invariant model. From the LEH theory one can obtain the linearized new massive gravity (NMG) in D=2+1 via Kaluza–Klein dimensional reduction followed by a dual master action. Here we show that a similar route takes us from the WTDIFF model to a linearized scalar–tensor NMG which belongs to a larger class of consistent spin-0 modifications of NMG. We also show that a traceless master action applied to a parity singlet furnishes two new spin-2 self-dual models. Moreover, we examine the singular replacement h_{mu nu } rightarrow h_{mu nu } - eta _{mu nu }h/D and prove that it leads to consistent massive spin-2 models in D=2+1. They include linearized versions of unimodular topologically massive gravity (TMG) and unimodular NMG. Although the free part of those unimodular theories are Weyl invariant, we do not expect any improvement in the renormalizability. Both the linearized K-term (in NMG) and the linearized gravitational Chern–Simons term (in TMG) are invariant under longitudinal reparametrizations delta h_{mu nu } = partial _{mu }partial _{nu }zeta , which is not a symmetry of the WTDIFF Einstein–Hilbert term. Therefore, we still have one degree of freedom whose propagator behaves like 1/p^2 for large momentum.

Unitarity problems in 3D gravity theories

We revisit the problem of the bulk-boundary unitarity clash in 2 + 1 dimensional gravity theories, which has been an obstacle in providing a viable dual two-dimensional conformal field theory for bulk gravity in anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. Chiral gravity, which is a particular limit of cosmological topologically massive gravity (TMG), suffers from pertur- bative log-modes with negative energies inducing a non-unitary logarithmic boundary field theory. We show here that any f(R) extension of TMG does not improve the situation. We also study the perturbative modes in the metric formulation of minimal massive gravity- originally constructed in a first-order formulation-and find that the massive mode has again negative energy except in the chiral limit. We comment on this issue and also discuss a possible solution to the problem of negative energy modes. In any of these theories, the infinitesimal dangerous deformations might not be integrable to full solutions; this suggests a linearization instability of AdS spacetime in the direction of the perturbative log-modes.

First law of entanglement entropy in topologically massive gravity

In this paper we explore the validity of the first law of entanglement entropy in the context of topologically massive gravity (TMG). We find that the variation of the holographic entanglement entropy under perturbation from the pure anti--de Sitter background satisfies the first law upon imposing the bulk equations of motion in a given time slice, despite the appearance of instabilities in the bulk for generic gravitational Chern-Simons coupling $\ensuremath{\mu}$. The Noether-Wald entropy is different from the holographic entanglement entropy in a general boosted frame. However, this discrepancy does not affect the entanglement first law.

Holographically viable extensions of topologically massive and minimal massive gravity?

Recently, an extension of the topologically massive gravity (TMG) in $2+1$ dimensions, dubbed as minimal massive gravity (MMG), was found which is free of the bulk-boundary unitarity clash that inflicts the former theory and all the other known three dimensional theories. Field equations of MMG differ from those of TMG at quadratic terms in the curvature that do not come from the variation of an action depending on the metric alone. Here we show that MMG is a unique theory and there does not exist a deformation of TMG or MMG at the cubic and quartic order (and beyond) in the curvature that is consistent at the level of the field equations. The only extension of TMG with the desired bulk and boundary properties having a single massive degree of freedom is MMG.

Dirac and scalar particles tunnelling from topological massive warped-AdS3 black hole

We investigate the Dirac and scalar particles tunnelling as a radiation of Warped AdS3 black holes in Topological Massive Gravity. Using Hamilton-Jacobi method, we discuss tunnelling probability and Hawking temperature of the spin-1/2 and spin-0 particles for the black hole. We observe the tunnelling probability and Hawking temperature to be same for the spin-1/2 and spin-0. We show that the tunnelling process may occur, for both Dirac and scalar particles.