Nonlocal Gravity: Fundamental Tetrads and Constitutive Relations

Abstract: Nonlocal gravity (NLG) is a classical nonlocal generalization of Einstein's theory of gravitation based on a certain analogy with the nonlocal electrodynamics of media. The history dependence enters NLG through a constitutive relation involving a causal kernel that should ultimately be determined via observational data. The purpose of this paper is to reformulate nonlocal gravity such that the nonlocal aspect of the constitutive relation directly connects measurable quantities as in the nonlocal electrodynamics of media. The resulting constitutive relation turns out to coincide with the recent suggestion of Puetzfeld, Obukhov, and Hehl [25]. With the new constitutive relation of NLG, it is possible to show that de Sitter spacetime is not a solution of NLG.