A Review of Third Way Consistent Theories

Abstract

We will give an overview of “third way consistent” theories. Field equations of such models do not come from the variation of a local action without auxiliary fields, yet their covariant divergences still vanish on-shell. First examples were discovered in three dimensions which were pure massive gravity and Yang-Mills theories. However, recently interacting p-form theories with this property in arbitrary dimensions were also constructed. After explaining construction of these theories and some of their general features, we will discuss some open problems and future directions.