We study cosmological evolutions of the generalized model of nonlinear massive gravity in which the graviton mass is given by a rolling scalar field and is varying along time. By performing dynamical analysis, we derive the critical points of this system and study their stabilities. These critical points can be classified into two categories depending on whether they are identical with the traditional ones obtained in General Relativity. We discuss the cosmological implication of relevant critical points.
Wolfgang Kummer was a pioneer of two-dimensional gravity and a strong advocate of the first order formulation in terms of Cartan variables. In the present work we apply Wolfgang Kummers philosophy, the `Vienna School approach, to a specific three-dimensional model of gravity, cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point. Exploiting a new Chern-Simons representation we perform a canonical analysis. The dimension of the physical phase space is two per point, and thus the theory exhibits a local physical degree of freedom, the topologically massive graviton.
We obtain the Misner-Sharp mass in the massive gravity for a four dimensional spacetime with a two dimensional maximally symmetric subspace via the inverse unified first law method. Significantly, the stress energy is conserved in this case with a widely used reference metric. Based on this property we confirm the derived Misner-Sharp mass by the conserved charge method. We find that the existence of the Misner-sharp mass in this case does not lead to extra constraint for the massive gravity, which is notable in modified gravities. In addition, as a special case, we also investigate the Misner-Sharp mass in the static spacetime. Especially, we take the FRW universe into account for investigating the thermodynamics of the massive gravity. The result shows that the massive gravity can be in thermodynamic equilibrium, which fills in the gap in the previous studies of thermodynamics in the massive gravity.
A ghost free massive deformation of unimodular gravity (UG), in the spirit of {em mimetic massive gravity}, is shown to exist. This construction avoids the no-go theorem for a Fierz-Pauli type of mass term in UG by giving up on Lorentz invariance. In our framework, the mimetic degree of freedom vanishes on-shell.
We present a class of charged black hole solutions in an ($n+2)$-dimensional massive gravity with a negative cosmological constant, and study thermodynamics and phase structure of the black hole solutions both in grand canonical ensemble and canonical ensemble. The black hole horizon can have a positive, zero or negative constant curvature characterized by constant $k$. By using Hamiltonian approach, we obtain conserved charges of the solutions and find black hole entropy still obeys the area formula and the gravitational field equation at the black hole horizon can be cast into the first law form of black hole thermodynamics. In grand canonical ensemble, we find that thermodynamics and phase structure depends on the combination $k -mu^2/4 +c_2 m^2$ in the four dimensional case, where $mu$ is the chemical potential and $c_2m^2$ is the coefficient of the second term in the potential associated with graviton mass. When it is positive, the Hawking-Page phase transition can happen, while as it is negative, the black hole is always thermodynamically stable with a positive capacity. In canonical ensemble, the combination turns out to be $k+c_2m^2$ in the four dimensional case. When it is positive, a first order phase transition can happen between small and large black holes if the charge is less than its critical one. In higher dimensional ($n+2 ge 5$) case, even when the charge is absent, the small/large black hole phase transition can also appear, the coefficients for the third ($c_3m^2$) and/or the fourth ($c_4m^2$) terms in the potential associated with graviton mass in the massive gravity can play the same role as the charge does in the four dimensional case.
We derived local boundary counterterms in massive gravity theory with a negative cosmological constant in four dimensions. With these counterterms at hand we analyzed the properties of the boundary field theory in the context of AdS/CFT duality by calculating the boundary stress energy tensor. The calculation shows that the boundary stress energy tensor is conserved, and momentum dissipation might occur on the level of linear response only. We also calculated the thermodynamic quantities and the boundary stress energy tensor for a specific type of solutions. The thermodynamic potentials agree with the results of literature up to some constants which can be removed by adding finite counterterms.