Symmetries of topological gravity with torsion in the hamiltonian and lagrangian formalisms

Abstract

A systematic analysis of the symmetries of topological 3D gravity with torsion and a cosmological term, in the first order formalism, has been performed in details - both in the hamiltonian and lagrangian formalisms. This illuminates the connection between the symmetries of curved spacetime (diffeomorphisms plus local Lorentz transformations) with the Poincare gauge transformations. The Poincare gauge symmetries of the action are shown to be inequivalent to its gauge symmetries. Finally, the complete analysis is compared with the metric formulation where the diffeomorphism symmetry is shown to be equivalent to the gauge symmetry.