A Lagrangian formulation for Rastall gravity and a covariant formulation for unimodular gravity

Abstract We propose a Lagrangian formulation for a non-conservative gravity model in which the divergence of the energy-momentum tensor in curved spacetime does not vanish. This is accomplished by introducing an arbitrary vector field that couples with the gradient of the Ricci curvature scalar. We first derive the field equations using the Palatini variational approach. Because the connection and the metric tensor are independent in the Palatini framework, the auxiliary vector field dictates whether the manifold geometry is Weyl or Riemannian. By assuming certain physically reasonable conditions on this vector field, the resulting field equations reduce to those of Rastall gravity. Furthermore, slightly different conditions on the vector field furnish unimodular gravity. For comparison, we also employ the standard metric variational approach to obtain the field equations, demonstrating that the same models can be recovered under appropriate conditions. Our key results are the derivation of a covariant Lagrangian formulation for Rastall gravity and a new Lagrangian formulation for unimodular gravity.