Well-posed formulation of Lovelock and Horndeski theories

Abstract

We study the initial value problem for Lovelock and Horndeski theories of gravity. We show that the equations of motion of these theories can be written in a form that, at weak coupling, is strongly hyperbolic and therefore admits a well-posed initial value problem. This is achieved by introducing a new class of ``modified harmonic'' gauges for general relativity.

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