Decoupling and reduction in Chern-Simons modified gravity

We show that for four-dimensional spacetimes with a non-null hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector and for a Chern-Simons (CS) background (non-dynamical) scalar field, which is constant along the Killing vector, the source-free equations of CS modified gravity decouple into their Einstein and Cotton constituents. Thus, the model supports only general relativity solutions. We also show that, when the cosmological constant vanishes and the gradient of the CS scalar field is parallel to the non-null hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector of constant length, CS modified gravity reduces to topologically massive gravity in three dimensions. Meanwhile, with the cosmological constant such a reduction requires an appropriate source term for CS modified gravity. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.