Premetric approach in gravity and electrodynamics

Understand

The basics of the premetric approach are discussed, including the essential details of the formalism and some of its beautiful consequences.

• We demonstrate how the classical electrodynamics can be developed without a metric in a quite straightforward way: Maxwell's equations, together with the general response law for material media, admit a consistent premetric formulation.
• Furthermore, we show that in relativistic theories of gravity, the premetric program leads to a better understanding of the interdependence between topological, affine, and metric concepts.