An analysis of Born–Infeld determinantal gravity in Weitzenböck spacetime

Abstract

The Born–Infeld theory of the gravitational field formulated in Weitzenböck spacetime is studied in detail. The action, constructed quadratically upon the torsion two-form, reduces to Einstein gravity in the low field limit where the Born–Infeld constant λ goes to infinity, and it is described by second order field equations for the vielbein field in D spacetime dimensions. The equations of motion are derived, and a number of properties coming from them are discussed. In particular, we show that under fairly general circumstances, the equations of motion are those of Einstein's General Relativity plus an energy-momentum tensor of purely geometrical character. This tensor is obtained solely from the parallelization defining the spacetime structure, which is encoded in a set of D smooth, everywhere non-null, globally defined 1-forms ea. Spherical symmetry is studied as an example, and we comment on the emergence of the Schwarzschild geometry within this framework. Potential (regular) extensions of it are envisioned.