Junction conditions for higher order gravity theories from a Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term
Phys. Rev. D 112, 024007 – Published 2 July, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/m5lt-l2jg
Abstract
In this work, we study the problem of generalizing the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary terms for general quadratic theories of gravity and propose a simple condition to obtain them. From these terms, we derive the junction conditions for a subset of this family of theories that includes Gauss-Bonnet (GB) gravity. We reobtain the well-known results for GB theory, generalize them to other quadratic theories, and compare the resulting junction conditions with the ones already derived in the literature using other methods.
