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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 9: History and Philosophy of General Relativity

AGPhil 9.3: Talk

Thursday, March 13, 2025, 15:15–15:45, HS XVII

Spacetime Theories Beyond Curvature: Two Incompatible Approaches to Torsion Gravity — •Kartik Tiwari — University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Although the standard picture of gravity utilizes a connection between mass-energy distribution and curvature of spacetime, this connection is not unique. Using additional differential geometric concepts (torsion and non-metricity), a relativist can construct various modifications and reformulations of general relativity. Each alternate theory of spacetime is bundled with a blend of attractive and repulsive scientific (or aesthetic) features. In my talk, I discuss two mutually-incompatible frameworks for endowing spacetime with additional geometry. During the first half of the talk, I describe the nature of this incompatibility by comparing the technical foundations of the geometric-trinity paradigm with gauge gravity approaches. In the latter half of the talk, I use Ehlers' work on Frame Theory to re-evaluate the strength of evidence that existing results on the Newton-Cartan limit of Teleparallel Gravity provide.

Keywords: Modified Gravity; Newton-Cartan; Spacetime; Torsion; Ehlers