Instability in cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point

Abstract

We consider cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point with positive sign of the Einstein-Hilbert term. We demonstrate the presence of a negative energy bulk mode that grows linearly in time. Unless there are physical reasons to discard this mode, this theory is unstable. To address this issue we prove that the mode is not pure gauge and that its negative energy is time-independent and finite. The isometry generators L_0 and \bar{L}_0 have non-unitary matrix representations like in logarithmic CFT. While the new mode obeys boundary conditions that are slightly weaker than the ones by Brown and Henneaux, its fall-off behavior is compatible with spacetime being asymptotically AdS_3. We employ holographic renormalization to show that the variational principle is well-defined. The corresponding Brown-York stress tensor is finite, traceless and conserved. Finally we address possibilities to eliminate the instability and prospects for chiral gravity.