Modified Palatini action that gives the Einstein-Maxwell theory

Abstract

The actions for bosonic fields typically contain terms quadratic in the derivatives of the fields. This is not the case in the Palatini approach to general relativity. The action does not contain any derivatives of the metric and it only contains terms linear in the derivatives of the connection. In general relativity the covariant derivative of the metric vanishes, so it is not possible to include such terms in the action. However, in more general theories this is not the case. In this paper I consider an action which is quadratic in the derivatives of the metric and connection and show that it leads to the coupled Einstein-Maxwell theory or the coupled Einstein-Proca theory with the antisymmetric part of the Ricci tensor playing the role of the electromagnetic field strength.