Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2605.05817

Classical General Relativity as a Non-Conservative Action-Dependent Field Theory

Callum Bell·David Sloan
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Previous work has provided the mathematical framework within which to analyse dynamical similarities for classical theories of fields. This formalism has been extended to those theories which, in addition to scaling symmetries, also possess gauge degrees of freedom. In this article, we apply these ideas to the analysis of the first-order Palatini formulation of General Relativity. It is shown that the conformal mode of the spacetime metric may be identified as the generator of a dynamical similarity. Further, we demonstrate that the dynamical content of the Hilbert-Palatini action may be reformulated in terms of an action-dependent field theory, which makes no reference to the conformal mode. Finally, we consider the linearised limit of the equations of motion derived from the scale-reduced action. We find that, in the harmonic gauge, the first-order metric perturbations satisfy a free wave equation, as expected. However, the elimination of the conformal factor requires a qualitative reinterpretation of the physics at second order. Conventionally, one considers the second-order perturbations to be sourced by quadratic combinations of first-order terms. These are packaged into an object identified as an `effective stress-energy tensor'. This interpretation must be amended for the action-dependent theory, where the presence of terms that couple the action sector with the geometrical degrees of freedom shows that our construction is inherently non-conservative.

Explore related subjects

gr-qc

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Callum Bell, David Sloan. 2026-05-07. Classical General Relativity as a Non-Conservative Action-Dependent Field Theory. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05817

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗