Canonical Analysis and Stability of Lanczos-Lovelock Gravity

We perform a space-time analysis of the D > 4 quadratic curvature Lanczos-Lovelock (LL) model, exhibiting its dependence on intrinsic/extrinsic curvatures, lapse and shifts. As expected from general covariance, the field equations include D constraints, of zeroth and first time derivative order. In the “linearized” – here necessarily cubic – limit, we give an explicit formulation in terms of the usual ADM metric decomposition, incidentally showing that time derivatives act only on its transverse-traceless spatial components. Unsurprisingly, pure LL has no Hamiltonian formulation, nor are even its – quadratic – weak field constraints easily soluble. Separately, we point out that the extended, more physical R+LL, model is stable – its energy is positive – due to its supersymmetric origin and ghost-freedom.