We analyse the behaviour of the MacDowell-Mansouri action with internal symmetry group SO(4, 1) under the De Donder-Weyl Hamiltonian formulation. The field equations, known in this formalism as the De Donder-Weyl equations, are obtained by means of the graded Poisson-Gerstenhaber bracket structure present within the De Donder-Weyl formulation. The decomposition of the internal algebra so(4, 1) ≃ so(3, 1) ⊕ R 3,1 allows the symmetry breaking SO(4, 1) → SO(3, 1), which reduces the original action to the Palatini action without the topological term. We demonstrate that, in contrast to the Lagrangian approach, this symmetry breaking can be performed indistinctly in the polysymplectic formalism either before or after the variation of the De Donder-Weyl Hamiltonian has been done, recovering Einstein's equations via the Poisson-Gerstenhaber bracket.The equivalence between the action proposed by MacDowell and Mansouri and the Palatini action is made possible by the fact that the internal Lie algebra admits the orthogonal splitting so(4, 1) ≃ so(3, 1) ⊕R 3,1 , so that the symmetry breaking is achieved by projecting the associated SO(4, 1)-connection to its SO(3, 1) components, which turn out to be the standard Lorentz connection. As pointed out by Wise [2], a concise geometrical meaning can be given to the symmetry breaking process by identifying the SO(4, 1) gauge field as a connection of a Cartan geometry [11,12].Being a theory with a strong geometric background and also physically relevant due to its relation with General Relativity, the MacDowell-Mansouri model is a perfect candidate for analysis under the inherently geometric classical formulation known as the polysymplectic formalism. Based on the early work of De Donder, Weyl, Carathéodory, among others [13,14,15], the polysymplectic approach of field theory consists in a De Donder-Weyl Hamiltonian formalism endowed with a generalization of the symplectic structure which enables to define a Poisson-like bracket. This issue, in particular, sets an important distinction with most of the various versions of the multisymplectic formalism. One of the key points within the polysymplectic approach relies in changing the definition of the standard Hamiltonian momenta, here considered not as variations of the Lagrangian density with respect to time derivatives of the field variables but as variations with respect to the derivatives of the fields in every spacetime direction. These new fields, known within this context as polymomenta, define a De Donder-Weyl Legendre transformation which associates to the Lagrangian density a new function H DW called De Donder-Weyl Hamiltonian, and it dictates the physical behaviour of the system in the so-called polymomentum phase-space. Without a space-like foliation, the polysymplectic formalism provides a manifestly spacetime covariant formulation. The polymomentum phase-space is endowed with a canonical (n + 1)-form, called the polysymplectic form [16,17,18,19], which plays a similar role to the one of the standard symplectic 2-form. A ...
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