Related papers: Accelerating universe, WEP violation and antihydro…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) bounds the mass of a particle by its charge. It is expected that this bound can not be below the ultraviolet cut-off scale of the effective theory. Recently, an extension of the WGC was proposed in the…
The CPT theorem and the Weak Equivalence Principle are foundational principles on which the standard description of the fundamental interactions is based. The validity of such basic principles should be tested using the largest possible…
The Copernican principle (CP), i.e. the assumption that we are not privileged observers of the Universe, is a fundamental tenet of the standard cosmological model. A violation of this postulate implies the possibility that the apparent…
We revise the cosmological standard model presuming that matter, i.e. baryons and cold dark matter, exhibits a non-vanishing pressure mimicking the cosmological constant effects. In particular, we propose a scalar field Lagrangian $\mathcal…
The late time acceleration of the Universe has challenged contemporary cosmology since its discovery. General Relativity explains this phenomenon by introducing the cosmological constant, named the standard cosmological model…
We show how the scalar field, a candidate of quintessence, in a proposed model of the scalar-tensor theories of gravity provides a way to understand a small but nonzero cosmological constant as indicated by recent observations. A particular…
The AMS experiment has recently measured the proton and helium spectra in cosmic rays (CRs) in the GeV-TeV energy region. The two spectra are found to progressively harden at rigidity $R = pc/Z >\,$200 GV, while the p/He ratio is found to…
We study the effect of a violation of the strong equivalence principle (SEP) on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Such a violation would modify the weight of baryons in the primordial gravitational potentials and hence their impact in…
This paper continues the development of a discrete space-time concept that is recently used in the explanation of the cosmological constant. Instead of order estimation, a more theoretical treatment of the theory is introduced. Based on the…
We explicitly compute the dynamics of closed homogeneous and isotropic universes permeated by a single perfect fluid with a constant equation of state parameter $w$ in the context of a recent reformulation of general relativity, proposed in…
General relativistic entropic acceleration theory may explain the present cosmic acceleration from first principles without the need of introducing a cosmological constant. Following the covariant formulation of non-equilibrium phenomena in…
We discuss aspects of antihydrogen studies, that relate to particle physics ideas and techniques, within the context of the ALPHA experiment at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator facility. We review the fundamental physics motivations for…
We carry out an analysis of the cosmological perturbations in general relativity for three different models which are good candidates to describe the current acceleration of the Universe. These three set-ups are described classically by…
We study the entropy of a FRW universe filled with dark energy (cosmological constant, quintessence or phantom). For general or time-dependent equation of state $p=w\rho$ the entropy is expressed in terms of energy, Casimir energy, and $w$.…
It is shown that gravitation naturally emerges from the standard model of particle physics if local scale invariance is imposed in the context of a single conformal (Weyl-symmetric) theory. Gravitation is then conformally-related to the…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
Modern cosmology has created a tight link between particle physics / field theory and a wealth of new observational data on the structure of the Universe. These lecture notes focus on some of the most important aspects concerning the…
An explicitly covariant formulation is presented of a modified DGP scenario proposed recently [1], to avoid the instability of the self-accelerating branch. It is based on the introduction of a bulk scalar field with appropriate non-minimal…
With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost…
Major observational efforts in the coming decade are designed to probe the equation of state of dark energy. Measuring a deviation of the equation-of-state parameter w from -1 would indicate a dark energy that cannot be represented solely…