An action principle is described which unifies general relativity and topological field theory. An additional degree of freedom is introduced, and depending on the value it takes the theory has solutions that reduce it to 1) general relativity in Palatini form, 2) general relativity in the Ashtekar form, 3) F ∧ F theory for SO(5) and 4) BF theory for SO(5). This theory then makes it possible to...

Einstein’s general theory of relativity [1] is a successful classical theory of gravitation inasmuch as it agrees with all experimental data available at present [2]. To develop a microphysical gravitation theory, it may prove useful to investigate the extent to which the basic physical tenets of general relativity conform with the fundamental principles of the quantum theory. This is the gener...

The history of the theory of general relativity presents unique features. After its discovery, the theory was immediately confirmed and rapidly changed established notions of space and time. The further implications of general relativity, however, remained largely unexplored until the mid 1950s, when it came into focus as a physical theory and gradually returned to the mainstream of physics. Th...

While it has been generally accepted for decades that general relativity and quantum theory are inconsistent, and that therefore general relativity must yield to a new theory of gravity compatible with quantum principles, the way to the new theory is still very unclear. A major obstacle is the lack of any experimental indicators as to where general relativity might break down. I speculate on th...

The formulation of General Relativity presented in [1] and the Hamiltonian formulation of Gauge theories described in [2] are made to interact. The resulting scheme allows to see General Relativity as a constrained Gauge theory. Mathematics Subject Classification: 70S05, 70S15, 81T13

It is common to note that the two great theoretical frameworks of twentieth-century physics, quantum theory and general relativity, are prima facie incompatible. Within the physics community, the incompatibility is largely discussed on a technical level. In this paper, I would like to frame the problem more conceptually, focussing on the respective ontologies of the two frameworks. When I speak...

Finding solutions to non-linear field theories, such as Yang-Mills theories or general relativity, is usually difficult. The field equations of Yang-Mills theories and general relativity are known to share some mathematical similarities , and this connection can be used to find solutions to one theory using known solutions of the other theory. For example, the Schwarzschild solution of general ...

The restricted relativity theory resulted mathematically in the introduction of pseudo-euclidean four-dimensional space and the welding together of the electric and magnetic force vectors into the electromagnetic tensor. Einstein's general relativity theory led to the assumption that the fourdimensional space mentioned above is a curved space and the curvature was made to account for the gravit...

In this paper we show in detail how the histories description of general relativity carries representations of both the spacetime diffeomorphisms group and the Dirac algebra of constraints. We show that the introduction of metric-dependent equivariant foliations leads to the crucial result that the canonical constraints are invariant under the action of spacetime diffeomorphisms. Furthermore, t...