Violation of Causality in $f(Q)$ Gravity

There is ongoing interest in the nonmetricity formulation of gravity. The nonlinear extension of the theory, called $f(Q)$ gravity, has recently been proposed and offers a promising avenue for addressing some of the long-standing challenges in cosmology and fundamental physics. A number of solutions have already been found that have confirmed the usefulness of the theory for astrophysics and cosmology. Motivated by earlier work on G\"odel-type spacetimes, we investigate whether $f(Q)$ gravity admits cosmological solutions that violate causality. We find that G\"odel-type metrics do not appear to be compatible with this modified gravity theory unless it reduces to the trivial case of symmetric teleparallel gravity, corresponding to $f(Q)=AQ+B$, which is equivalent to general relativity. For $f(Q)$ more general than linear, the theory seems endowed with some chronology protection mechanism that shields it from G\"odel-like causality violations.