Chern-Simons models for gravity are interesting because they provide with a truly gauge-invariant action principle in the fiber-bundle sense. So far, their main drawback has largely been the perceived remoteness from standard General Relativity, based on the presence of higher powers of the curvature in the Lagrangian (except, remarkably, for threedimensional spacetime). Here we report on a simple model that suggests a mechanism by which standard General Relativity in five-dimensional spacetime may indeed emerge at a special critical point in the space of couplings, where additional degrees of freedom and corresponding "anomalous" Gauss-Bonnet constraints drop out from the Chern-Simons action. To achieve this result, both the Lie algebra g and the symmetric g-invariant tensor that define the Chern-Simons Lagrangian are constructed by means of the Lie algebra S-expansion method with a suitable finite abelian semigroup S. The results are generalized to arbitrary odd dimensions, and the possible extension to the case of eleven-dimensional supergravity is briefly discussed.

The different ways of description of the S = 0 particle with oscillator-like interaction are considered. The results are in conformity with the previous paper of S. Bruce and P. Minning.

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We present a family of static and evolving spherically symmetric Lorentzian wormhole solutions in N+1 dimensional Einstein gravity. In general, for static wormholes, we require that at least the radial pressure has a barotropic equation of state of the form pr = ωrρ, where the state parameter ωr is constant. On the other hand, it is shown that in any dimension N ≥ 3, with φ(r) = Λ = 0 and anisotropic barotropic pressure with constant state parameters, static wormhole configurations are always asymptotically flat spacetimes, while in 2+1 gravity there are not only asymptotically flat static wormholes and also more general ones. In this case, the matter sustaining the three-dimensional wormhole may be only a pressureless fluid. In the case of evolving wormholes with N ≥ 3, the presence of a cosmological constant leads to an expansion or contraction of the wormhole configurations: for positive cosmological constant we have wormholes which expand forever and, for negative cosmological constant we have wormholes which expand to a maximum value and then recollapse. In the absence of a cosmological constant the wormhole expands with constant velocity, i.e without acceleration or deceleration. In 2+1 dimensions the expanding wormholes always have an isotropic and homogeneous pressure, depending only on the time coordinate.

In this paper we study the possibility of sustaining an evolving wormhole via exotic matter made of phantom energy in the presence of a cosmological constant. We derive analytical evolving wormhole geometries by supposing that the radial tension of the phantom matter, which is negative to the radial pressure, and the pressure measured in the tangential directions have barotropic equations of state with constant state parameters. In this case the presence of a cosmological constant ensures accelerated expansion of the wormhole configurations. More specifically, for positive cosmological constant we have wormholes which expand forever and, for negative cosmological constant we have wormholes which expand to a maximum value and then recolapse. At spatial infinity the energy density and the pressures of the anisotropic phantom matter threading the wormholes vanish; thus these evolving wormholes are asymptotically vacuum Λ-Friedmann models with either open or closed or flat topologies.