Related papers: Can infrared gravitons screen $\Lambda$?
While the accumulation of long wavelength modes during inflation wreaks havoc on the large scale structure of spacetime, the question of even observability of their presence by any local observer has lead to considerable confusion. Though…
We investigate the initial state of the inflationary universe. In our recent publications, we showed that requesting the gauge invariance in the local observable universe to the initial state guarantees the infrared (IR) regularity of loop…
We study the backreaction of superhorizon fluctuations of a light quantum scalar field on a classical de Sitter geometry by means of the Wilsonian renormalisation group. This allows us to treat the gravitationally amplified fluctuations in…
We consider the massless, minimally coupled scalar on de Sitter background. Although the 1-loop divergences of the graviton 1PI 2-point function are canceled by the usual Weyl ($C^2$) and Eddington ($R^2$) counterterms, there is still a…
In any scalar-tensor theory of gravity exhibiting a screening mechanism, the fifth force mediated by the scalar field is dynamically suppressed at sub-Solar system scales, allowing it to pass existing tests of gravity. As a result, a major…
Quantum theories of gravity are generally expected to have some degree of non-locality, with familiar local physics emerging only in a particular limit. Perturbative quantum gravity around backgrounds with isometries and compact Cauchy…
In the context of scalar tensor theories for gravity, there is a universally adopted hypothesis when running N-body simulations that time derivatives in the equation of motion for the scalar field are negligible. In this work we propose to…
We revisit the "sequester" proposal of Kaloper, Padilla and collaborators, in which the amplitude of the cosmological constant is decoupled from large contributions due to loops containing Standard Model particles. We review the different…
The curvature of a spacetime, either in a topological sense, or averaged over super-horizon-sized patches, is often equated with the global curvature term that appears in Friedmann's equation. In general, however, the Universe is…
Gravitational theories differing from General Relativity may explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe without a cosmological constant. However, to pass local gravitational tests, a "screening mechanism" is needed to suppress, on…
In this article, we study the no-boundary wave function in scalar-tensor gravity with various potentials for the non-minimally coupled scalar field. Our goal is to calculate probabilities for the scalar field - and hence the effective…
We study gravitational theories with a cosmological constant and the Gauss-Bonnet curvature squared term and analyze the possibility of de Sitter expanding spacetime with a constant internal space. We find that there are two branches of the…
A dynamical resolution to the cosmological constant fine-tuning problem has been previously put forward, based on a scalar-tensor gravitational theory possessing de Sitter attractor solutions characterized by a small Hubble expansion rate,…
It is known that the cosmological constant can be dynamically tuned to an arbitrary small value in classes of scalar tensor theories. The trouble with such schemes is that effective gravity itself vanishes. We explore the possibility of…
We continue the exploration of the consistency of a modified-gravity theory that generalizes General Relativity by including a dynamical torsion in addition to the dynamical metric. The six-parameter theory we consider was found to be…
Gravitational lensing is investigated in the weak field limit of fourth order gravity in which the Lagrangian of the gravitational field is modified by replacing the Ricci scalar curvature R with an analytical expression $f(R)$. Considering…
We study quantum gravitational perturbations in the static patch of de Sitter space. In particular, we determine the symplectic inner product of these perturbations and use it to write down the graviton two-point function in the state…
Metric theories of gravity are studied, beginning with a general action that is quadratic in curvature and allows infinite inverse powers of the d'Alembertian operator, resulting in infrared non-local extensions of general relativity. The…
In this paper we review and build on the common methods used to analyze null geodesics in Schwarzschild de Sitter space. We present a general technique which allows finding measurable intersection angles of null trajectories analytically,…
We make the cosmological constant, {\Lambda}, into a field and restrict the variations of the action with respect to it by causality. This creates an additional Einstein constraint equation. It restricts the solutions of the standard…