Hydrogen Burning in Low Mass Stars Constrains Alternative Gravity Theories
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
2017-12-12 v3 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
The most general scalar-tensor theories of gravity predict a weakening of the gravitational force inside astrophysical bodies. There is a minimum mass for hydrogen burning in stars that is set by the interplay of plasma physics and the theory of gravity. We calculate this for alternative theories of gravity, and find that it is always significantly larger than the general relativity prediction. The observation of several low mass Red Dwarf stars therefore rules out a large class of scalar-tensor gravity theories, and places strong constraints on the cosmological parameters appearing in the effective field theory of dark energy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.05964,
title = {Hydrogen Burning in Low Mass Stars Constrains Alternative Gravity Theories},
author = {Jeremy Sakstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.05964},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Updated to correct mistake in equation (6) that changed figure 1 and the bound on \Upsilon