Abstract

It is shown that the topological action for gravity in 2n-dimensions can be obtained from the (2 n + 1)-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity genuinely invariant under the Poincaré group. The 2n-dimensional topological gravity is described by the dynamics of the boundary of a (2 n + 1)-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity theory with suitable boundary conditions. The field f{symbol} a, which is necessary to construct this type of topological gravity in even dimensions, is identified with the coset field associated with the non-linear realizations of the Poincare group ISO (d - 1, 1). © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.