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Covariant Differential Identities and Conservation Laws in Metric-Torsion Theories of Gravitation. I. General Consideration

Arbitrary diffeomorphically invariant metric-torsion theories of gravity are considered. It is assumed that Lagrangians of such theories contain derivatives of field variables (tensor densities of arbitrary ranks and weights) up to a second order only. The generalized Klein-Noether methods for constructing manifestly covariant identities and conserved quantities are developed. Manifestly covariant expressions are constructed without including auxiliary structures like a background metric. In the Riemann-Cartan space, the following \emph{manifestly generally covariant results} are presented: (a) The complete generalized system of differential identities (the Klein-Noether identities) is obtained. (b) The generalized currents of three types depending on an arbitrary vector field displacements are constructed: they are the canonical Noether current, symmetrized Belinfante current and identically conserved Hilbert-Bergmann current. In particular, it is stated that the symmetrized Belinfante current does not depend on divergences in the Lagrangian. (c) The generalized boundary Klein theorem (third Noether theorem) is proved. (d) The construction of the generalized superpotential is presented in details, and questions related to its ambiguities are analyzed.