In this thesis massive higher derivative gravity theories are analyzed in some detail.
One-particle scattering amplitude between two covariantly conserved sources mediated by a graviton exchange
is found at tree-level in D dimensional (Anti)-de Sitter and flat spacetimes for the most
general quadratic curvature theory augmented with the Pauli-Fierz mass term. From the amplitude expression, the
Newtonian potential energies are calculated for various cases.
Also, from this amplitude and the propagator structure, a three dimensional unitary theory is identified. In the second part of the thesis,
the found three dimensional unitary theory is studied in more detail from a canonical point of view. The general higher order action is written
in terms of gauge-invariant functions both in flat and de Sitter backgrounds. The analysis is extended by
adding static sources, spinning masses and the gravitational Chern-Simons term separately to the theory in
the case of flat spacetime. For all cases the microscopic spectrum and the masses are found. In the discussion of curved
spacetime, the masses are found in the relativistic and non-relativistic limits. In the Appendix,
some useful calculations that are frequently used in the bulk of the thesis are given.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613975/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Creators | Gullu, Ibrahim |
| Contributors | Tekin, Bayram |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Ph.D. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds