- Accepted Paper
Vacuum gravity from entropy: Stability, spectra, and exact waves
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 19 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lxlj-ppwh
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 19 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lxlj-ppwh
We analyze the vacuum dynamics of Gravity from Entropy, including its algebraically constrained -field formulation. Evaluating the curvature traces over zero-, one-, and two-form sectors, we show that the complete Minkowski Hessian is exactly that of the quadratic-gravity action , with $A=3\beta/\ell_{\rm P}^{4}$ and $B=5\beta^{2}/(2\ell_{\rm P}^{4})$. For diagonalizable curvature blocks, the same action reduces to a sum over eigenvalue logarithms and reproduces these coefficients exactly. A strict diagonal-curvature restriction on the perturbations is instead only a reduced subsector and excludes non-diagonalizable type-N wave curvatures. Linearizing the -field equations and subsequently imposing the algebraic vacuum constraint reproduces the same reduced metric equation and covariant Minkowski Hessian. The spectrum contains the massless graviton, a scalar with , and an opposite-residue spin-2 branch with . For the foundational choice , conventional Einstein normalization yields an opposite-residue tachyonic spin-2 pole at a characteristic scale of order , whose physical interpretation may depend on the ultraviolet completion of the theory. We also show that every four-dimensional Ricci-flat metric solves the local bulk equations through quadratic curvature order, while square-zero Ricci-flat pp-waves are exact local vacuum solutions of the analytic metric-only logarithmic branch. On the isolated massless transverse-traceless eigenspace, the quadratic translation current has the standard general-relativistic normalization.
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