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2

Whilst the question is not a resource request, I would recommend Edward Witten's paper on the topic published in 1988, titled, 2+1 Dimensional Gravity as a Soluble System. In the paper, Witten shows: $2+1$ dimensional gravity with or without $\Lambda$ is soluble classically and at the quantum level $2+1$ dimensional gravity is related to a Yang-Mills ...

3

Classically they are clearly topological. The metric does not appear, and you don't need a metric for integration on manifolds to make sense. Now in dimension 3 you can cast the Einstein-Hilbert action into a Chern-Simons theory as you say. The connection takes it values in the Lie algebra of the Poincare group. In higher dimensions you need to use higher ...

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The gravitational Chern-Simons action is topological, yes. The gauge connection encodes the field of gravity and since it is being integrated over, the result does not depend on a metric. (In the expressions you write maybe the vielbein contribution is missing? Or maybe you mean to have absorbed it in the notation.) Notice that it's just the usual ...

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