No Arabic abstract
A four-dimensional regularization of Lovelock-Lanczos gravity up to an arbitrary curvature order is considered. We show that Lovelock-Lanczos terms can provide a non-trivial contribution to the Einstein field equations in four dimensions, for spherically symmetric and Friedmann-Lema^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker spacetimes, as well as at first order in perturbation theory around (anti) de Sitter vacua. We will discuss the cosmological and black hole solutions arising from these theories, focusing on the presence of attractors and their stability. Although curvature singularities persist for any finite number of Lovelock terms, it is shown that they disappear in the non-perturbative limit of a theory with a unique vacuum.
It is found that, when the coupling constants $alpha_p$ in the theory of regularized Lovelock gravity are properly chosen and the number of Lovelock tensors $prightarrow infty$, there exist a fairly large number of nonsingular (singularity free) black holes and nonsingular universes. Some nonsingular black holes have numerous horizons and numerous energy levels (a bit like atom) inside the outer event horizon. On the other hand, some nonsingular universes start and end in two de Sitter phases. The ratio of energy densities for the two phases are $120$ orders. It is thus helpful to understand the cosmological constant problem.
We derive the Hamiltonian for spherically symmetric Lovelock gravity using the geometrodynamics approach pioneered by Kuchav{r} in the context of four-dimensional general relativity. When written in terms of the areal radius, the generalized Misner-Sharp mass and their conjugate momenta, the generic Lovelock action and Hamiltonian take on precisely the same simple forms as in general relativity. This result supports the interpretation of Lovelock gravity as the natural higher-dimensional extension of general relativity. It also provides an important first step towards the study of the quantum mechanics, Hamiltonian thermodynamics and formation of generic Lovelock black holes.
The recently proposed regularized Lovelock tensors are kinetically coupled to the scalar field. The resulting equation of motion is second order. In particular, it is found that when the $p=3$ regularized Lovelock tensor is kinetically coupled to the scalar field, the scalar field is the potential candidate of cosmic dark energy.
We consider a static self-gravitating perfect fluid system in Lovelock gravity theory. For a spacial region on the hypersurface orthogonal to static Killing vector, by the Tolmans law of temperature, the assumption of a fixed total particle number inside the spacial region, and all of the variations (of relevant fields) in which the induced metric and its first derivatives are fixed on the boundary of the spacial region, then with the help of the gravitational equations of the theory, we can prove a theorem says that the total entropy of the fluid in this region takes an extremum value. A converse theorem can also be obtained following the reverse process of our proof. We also propose the definition of isolation quasi-locally for the system and explain the physical meaning of the boundary conditions in the proof of the theorems.
We study how the standard definitions of ADM mass and Brown-York quasi-local energy generalize to pure Lovelock gravity. The quasi-local energy is renormalized using the background subtraction prescription and we consider its limit for large surfaces. We find that the large surface limit vanishes for asymptotically flat fall-off conditions except in Einstein gravity. This problem is avoided by focusing on the variation of the quasi-local energy which correctly approaches the variation of the ADM mass for large surfaces. As a result, we obtain a new simple formula for the ADM mass in pure Lovelock gravity. We apply the formula to spherically symmetric geometries verifying previous calculations in the literature. We also revisit asymptotically AdS geometries.