English

Conformal frames in cosmology

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2016-11-23 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

From higher dimensional theories, e.g. string theory, one expects the presence of non-minimally coupled scalar fields. We review the notion of conformal frames in cosmology and emphasize their physical equivalence, which holds at least at a classical level. Furthermore, if there is a field, or fields, which dominates the universe, as it is often the case in cosmology, we can use such notion of frames to treat our system, matter and gravity, as two different sectors. On one hand, the gravity sector which describes the dynamics of the geometry and on the other hand the matter sector which has such geometry as a playground. We use this interpretation to build a model where the fact that a curvaton couples to a particular frame metric could leave an imprint in the CMB.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.06332,
  title  = {Conformal frames in cosmology},
  author = {Guillem Domènech and Misao Sasaki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.06332},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Plenary talk given at the 2nd LeCosPA Symposium: Everything about Gravity