Uniqueness of Galilean and Carrollian limits of gravitational theories and application to higher derivative gravity

Abstract

We show that the seemingly different methods used to derive non-Lorentzian (Galilean and Carrollian) gravitational theories from Lorentzian ones are equivalent. Specifically, the pre-nonrelativistic and the pre-ultralocal parametrizations can be constructed from the gauging of the Galilei and Carroll algebras, respectively. Also, the pre-ultralocal approach of taking the Carrollian limit is equivalent to performing the ADM decomposition and then setting the signature of the Lorentzian manifold to zero. We use this uniqueness to write a generic expansion for the curvature tensors and construct Galilean and Carrollian limits of all metric theories of gravity of finite order ranging from the $f(R)$ gravity to a completely generic higher derivative theory, the $f(g_{\mu\nu},R_{\mu\nu\sigma \rho},\nabla_{\mu})$ gravity. We present an algorithm for calculation of the $n$-th order of the Galilean and Carrollian expansions that transforms this problem into a constrained optimization problem. We also derive the condition under which a gravitational theory becomes a modification of general relativity in both limits simultaneously.