Junction conditions in a general field theory

Abstract: It is well-known in the modified gravity scene that the calculation of junction conditions in certain complicated theories leads to ambiguities and conflicts between the various formulations. This paper introduces a general framework to compute junction conditions in any reasonable classical field theory and analyzes their properties. We prove that in any variational field theory, it is possible to define unambiguous and mathematically well-defined junction conditions either by interpreting the Euler-Lagrange differential equation as a distribution or as the extremals of a variational functional and these two coincide. We provide an example calculation which highlights why ambiguities in the existing formalisms have arisen, essentially due to incorrect usage of distributions. Relations between junction conditions, the boundary value problem of variational principles and Gibbons--Hawking--York-like surface terms are examined. The methods presented herein relies on the use of coordinates adapted to represent the junction surface as a leaf in a foliation and a technique for reducing the order of Lagrangians to the lowest possible in the foliation parameter. We expect that the reduction theorem can generate independent interest from the rest of the topics considered in the paper.