Advances of Symmetry in Gravity

Dear Colleagues,

Since Emmy Noether's celebrated theorem, relating symmetries of the action with conservation laws, symmetry is one of the most fundamental concepts in theoretical physics. Conservation laws play of course a fundamental role in integrability but also in high energy physics and the description of fundamental interactions. Indeed three of the four fundamental interactions, namely strong, weak and electromagnetic are very successfully described by the Standard Model. The Standard Model is based on gauge symmetry. Also any theory of fundamental interaction beyond the Standard Model is based on symmetry concepts like, for example, supersymmetry.

The only fundamental interaction which does not fit inside the Standard Model is Gravity. At classical level gravity is very successfully described by General Relativity. The conceptually revolutionary idea of General Relativity is to describe gravity as a geometric property of space-time. It is worth point out that the paradigm of describing gravity es geometry of space-time remains valid in the overwhelming majority of alternative theories to General Relativity. In all geometric theories of gravity symmetry plays a fundamental role. For example symmetry can be used to find exact solutions as it dramatically simplifies the structure of the equations of motions. Moreover, symmetry is also an important tool to classify and study the physical properties of exact solutions. The matter fields sourcing the gravitational field can also be Lie Algebra valued as, for example the Non-Linear-Sigma-Model, Skyrme Model or yang Mills Fields. Such field are of special interest as they can support solitonic solutions. Moreover, symmetry also enters in Holography, whose most famous implementation is the celebrated AdS/CFT duality.

All these examples suggest that is definitively worth to dedicate a Special Issue to the application of symmetry in gravitational physics. The aim of this Special Issue is to collect outstanding contributions in gravitational physics where symmetry plays a fundamental role. The subjects included in this issue are: (1) Exact solutions in General relativity, (2) Self gravitating solitons, (3) Alternative theories of gravity, (4) Dynamical Systems (5) cosmological models, (6) Black holes, (7) Holography, (8)Quantum gravity, (9) Gauge symmetry (10) Quantum field theory on curved space-time.

Prof. Dr. Alex Giacomini
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Canfora
Guest Editors

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• exact solutions in general relativity
• self-gravitating solitons
• alternative theories of gravity
• dynamical systems
• cosmological models
• black holes
• holography
• quantum gravity
• gauge symmetry
• quantum field theory on curved spacetime.