Abstract
We consider intersecting hypersurfaces in curved spacetime with gravity governed by a class of actions which are topological invariants in lower dimensionality. Along with the Chern-Simons boundary terms there is a sequence of intersection terms that should be added in the action functional for a well defined variational principle. We construct them in the case of Characteristic Classes, obtaining relations which have a general topological meaning. Applying them on a manifold with a discontinuous connection 1-form we obtain the gravity action functional of the system and show that the junction conditions can be found in a simple algebraic way. At the sequence of intersections there are localized independent energy tensors, constrained only by energy conservation. We work out explicitly the simplest nontrivial case.
| Original language | English |
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| Pages (from-to) | 4223-4238 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Journal of Mathematical Physics |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2004 |