Physics Letters B 802 (2020) 135275
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Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Geometric inequivalence of metric and Palatini formulations of General
Relativity
Cecilia Bejarano
a
, Adria Delhom
b
, Alejandro Jiménez-Cano
c
, Gonzalo J. Olmo
b,d,∗
,
Diego Rubiera-Garcia
e
a
Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio (IAFE, CONICET-UBA), Casilla de Correo 67, Sucursal 28, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina
b
Departamento de Física Teórica and IFIC, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia - CSIC, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot-46100, Valencia, Spain
c
Departamento de Física Teórica y del Cosmos and Centro Andaluz de Física de Partículas Elementales Facultad de Ciencias, Avda Fuentenueva s/n, Universidad de
Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
d
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, 58051-900 João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil
e
Departamento de Física Teórica and IPARCOS, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
26 November 2019
Received
in revised form 28 January 2020
Accepted
31 January 2020
Available
online 4 February 2020
Editor:
M. Cveti
ˇ
c
Projective invariance is a symmetry of the Palatini version of General Relativity which is not present
in the metric formulation. The fact that the Riemann tensor changes nontrivially under projective
transformations implies that, unlike in the usual metric approach, in the Palatini formulation this
tensor is subject to a gauge freedom, which allows some ambiguities even in its scalar contractions.
In this sense, we show that for the Schwarzschild solution there exists a projective gauge in which the
(affine) Kretschmann scalar, K ≡ R
α
βμν
R
α
βμν
, can be set to vanish everywhere. This puts forward that
the divergence of curvature scalars may, in some cases, be avoided by a gauge transformation of the
connection.
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
It is a widely accepted fact that General Relativity (GR) can be
seen as an effective theory which will be superseded by a possibly
quantum version when the curvature reaches the Planck scale. This
is well illustrated by the Schwarzschild space-time,
ds
2
=−
1 −
2M
r
dt
2
+
1
1 −
2M
r
dr
2
+r
2
(dθ
2
+sin
2
θ dφ
2
),
(1)
which is the spherically symmetric solution of the vacuum Ein-
stein
equations, G
μν
= 0with total mass M. Some components
of this line element diverges at r = 2M and at r = 0. Unveiling
the nature of these divergences was crucial to fully understand the
physics of black holes. In this sense, since GR is a diffeomorphism
invariant theory, one can choose new coordinates (for instance,
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
addresses: cbejarano@iafe.uba.ar (C. Bejarano), adria.delhom@uv.es
(A. Delhom),
alejandrojc@ugr.es (A. Jiménez-Cano), gonzalo.olmo@uv.es (G.J. Olmo),
drubiera@ucm.es (D. Rubiera-Garcia).
Eddington-Finkelstein) such that the metric singularity at r = 2M
turns
out to be avoidable. The r = 0 divergence, on the con-
trary,
cannot be removed by coordinate transformations because
the coordinate-independent Kretschmann scalar explodes there as
K ≡ R
α
βμν
R
α
βμν
= 48M
2
/r
6
. This argument is generally used to
conclude that a Schwarzschild black hole has a genuine curva-
ture
singularity at r = 0[1–10]. The unbounded curvature sug-
gests
that classical GR should break down when K ∼ 1/l
4
P
(where
l
P
≡
¯
hG/c
3
is Planck’s length), where the quantum gravitational
degrees of freedom are expected to play a non-negligible role. The
Schwarzschild solution, therefore, encapsulates the beginning and
the end of GR, in the sense that it illustrates both the novelties of
the theory and its physical limitations.
Given the importance of the physical limitations of the theory
already raised by the Schwarzschild solution, it is worth consid-
ering
if different realizations of GR are also affected by the same
problems, since this could help envision new ways to tackle the
quantum gravity issue. Among the various possibilities, the Pala-
tini
formulation can be regarded as the most natural one as, in fact,
it has served as the starting point for several important develop-
ments
such as the ADM formulation [11], supergravity [2], Deser’s
completion of a diffeomorphism invariant massless spin two the-
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135275
0370-2693/
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.