A note on dilaton gravity with non-smooth potentials

Recent interest in brane world models motivates the investigation of generic first order dilaton gravity actions, with potentials having some non-smoothness. We consider two different types of \delta-like contributions in the action and analyse their effects on the solutions. Furthermore a second source of non-smoothness arises due to the remaining ambiguities in the solutions in the separated smooth patches, after fixing all other constants by matching and asymptotic conditions. If moreover staticity is assumed, we explicitly construct exact solutions. With the methods described, for example models with point like sources or brane world models (where the second source of non-smoothness becomes crucial), can now be treated as non-smooth dilaton gravity theories.Comment: 10 pages, 1 table; two new references, some typos corrected, Dedicated to Wolfgang Kummer at the occasion of his Emeritierun

Quantization of four-dimensional Abelian gravity

An abelian version of standard general relativity in the Cartan-Palatini gauge-like formulation in four dimensions has been introduced. Traditional canonical analysis utilizing similarities to the akin Husain-Kuchar SU(2) version of gravity has been performed. The model has been next quantized in the canonical path-integral Faddeev-Popov formalism yielding abelian BF theory.Comment: Minor changes, additional symmetry discussed. 5 pages, 2 columns, REVTeX