Topological symmetry-restored phase of gravity

Abstract In this work, we propose a topological quantum field theory phase for four-dimensional gravity. We show it is able to generate, not only General Relativity, but the whole family of Lovelock–Cartan theories of gravity. This is accomplished due to the existence of a topological symmetry which, when explicitly broken via the introduction of a mass scale, releases the local degrees of freedom of gravity. Additionally, we introduce an extended notion of the (anti-)self-dual Landau gauge conditions to evaluate the Ward identities, counterterms, and prove the quantum stability of the model, to all orders in perturbation theory, using the algebraic renormalization technique.