Gauge theories of gravitation. Hehl, University of Belgrade, Serbia, Friedrich W. Hehl, University of Cologne, Germany & Univeristy of Missouri, Columbia, USA ; foreword by T.W.B. Kibble, FRS : a reader with commentaries

In the last five decades, the gauge approach to gravity has represented a research area of increasing importance for our understanding of the physics of fundamental interactions. A full clarification of the gauge dynamics of gravity is expected to be the last missing link to the hidden structure of a consistent unification of all the fundamental interactions, based on the gauge principle. The aim of the present reprint volume, with commentaries by Milutin Blagojevic and Friedrich W Hehl, is to introduce graduate and advanced undergraduate students of theoretical or mathematical physics, or any other interested researcher, to the field of classical gauge theories of gravity.This is not just an ordinary reprint volume; it is a guide to the literature on gauge theories of gravity. The reader is encouraged first to study the introductory commentaries and to become familiar with the basic content of the reprints and related ideas, then he/she can choose to read a specific reprint or reprints, and after that he/she should return again to the text and explore the additional literature, etc. The interaction is intended to be more complex than just starting with commentaries and ending with reprints. Part A The Rise of Gauge Theory of Gravity up to 1961 1. From Special to General Relativity Theory 2. Analyzing General Relativity Theory 3. A Fresh Start by Yang–Mills and Utiyama Part B Poincar ́e Gauge Theory 4. Einstein–Cartan(–Sciama–Kibble) Theory as Viable Gravit. Theory 5. General Structure of Poincare Gauge Theory (Including Quadratic Lagrangians) 6. Translational Gauge Theory 7. Fallacies About Torsion 259 Part C Extending the Gauge Group of Gravity 8. Poincare Group Plus Scale Transformations: Weyl–Cartan Gauge Theory of Gravity 9. From the Poincare to the Affine Group: Metric-Affine Gravity 10. Conformal Gauge Theory of Gravity 11. (Anti-)de Sitter Gauge Theory of Gravity 12. From the Square Root of Translations to the Super Poincare Group Part D Specific Subjects of Metric-Affine Gravity and Poincare Gauge Theory 13. Hamiltonian Structure 14. Equations of Motion for Matter 15. Cosmological Models 16. Exact Solutions 17. Poincare Gauge Theory in Three Dimensions 18. Dislocations and Torsion 19. The Yang Episode: A Historical Case Study