New massless and massive infinite derivative gravity in three dimensions

Abstract

In this paper we will consider the most general quadratic curvature action with infinitely many covariant derivatives of massless gravity in three spacetime dimensions. The action is parity invariant and torsion-free and contains the same off-shell degrees of freedom as the Einstein-Hilbert action in general relativity. In the ultraviolet, with an appropriate choice of the propagator given by the exponential of an entire function, the point-like curvature singularity can be smoothened to a Gaussian distribution, while in the infrared the theory reduces to general relativity. We will also show how to embed new massive gravity in ghost-free infinite derivative gravity in Minkowski background as one of the infrared limits. Finally, we will provide the tree-level unitarity conditions for infinite derivative gravity in presence of a cosmological constant in deSitter and Anti-deSitter spacetimes in three dimensions by perturbing the geometries.