Field-theoretical construction of currents and superpotentials in Lovelock gravity

Abstract

Conserved currents and related superpotentials for perturbations on arbitrary backgrounds in the Lovelock theory are constructed. We use the Lagrangian based field-theoretical method where perturbations are considered as dynamical fields propagating on a given background. Such a formulation is exact (not approximate) and equivalent to the theory in the original metric form. From the very start, using Noether theorem, we derive the Noether-Klein identities and adopt them for the purposes of the current work. Applying these identities in the framework of Lovelock theory, we construct conserved currents, energy-momentum tensors out of them, and related superpotentials with arbitrary displacement vectors, not restricting to Killing vectors. A comparison with the well known Abbott-Deser-Tekin approach is given. The developed general formalism is applied to give conserved quantities for perturbations on anti-de Sitter (AdS) backgrounds. As a test we calculate mass of the Schwarzschild-AdS black hole in the Lovelock theory in arbitrary $D$ dimensions. Proposals for future applications are presented.