Related papers: Can the Chameleon mechanism explain cosmic acceler…
A discrete space-time structure lying at about the Planck scale may become manifest in the form of very small violations of the conservation of the matter energy-momentum tensor. In order to include such kind of violations, forbidden within…
General Relativity is able to describe the dynamics of galaxies and larger cosmic structures only if most of the matter in the Universe is dark, namely it does not emit any electromagnetic radiation. Intriguingly, on the scale of galaxies,…
We consider a generalized Brans-Dicke model in which the scalar field has a potential function and is also allowed to couple non-minimally with the matter sector. We assume a power law form for the potential and the coupling functions as…
We consider the hypothesis of a limiting minimal curvature in gravity as a way to construct a class of theories exhibiting late-time cosmic acceleration. Guided by the minimal curvature conjecture (MCC) we are naturally lead to a set of…
We propose a novel method to test the gravitational interactions in the outskirts of galaxy clusters. When gravity is modified, this is typically accompanied by the introduction of an additional scalar degree of freedom, which mediates an…
We review some of the properties of chameleon theories. Chameleon fields are gravitationally coupled to matter and evade gravitational tests thanks to two fundamental properties. The first one is the density dependence of the chameleon…
Cosmological consequences of a string-motivated dark energy scenario featuring a scalar field coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant are investigated. We study the evolution of the universe in such a model, identifying its key properties.…
We consider a noncommutative standard model with a minimal coupling scalar field and a dynamical deformation between the canonical momenta of its scale factor and scalar field, and a chameleon model with a non-minimally coupling scalar…
When augmenting our cosmological models or gravitational theories with an additional light scalar field, any coupling between matter and this scalar can affect the orbital motion of binary systems. Ordinarily, the new force mediated by the…
We study the gravitational collapse of an overdensity of nonrelativistic matter under the action of gravity and a chameleon scalar field. We show that the spherical collapse model is modified by the presence of a chameleon field. In…
Viable modifications of gravity on cosmological scales predominantly rely on screening mechanisms to recover Einstein's Theory of General Relativity in the Solar System, where it has been well tested. A parametrisation of the effects of…
The last few decades have provided abundant evidence for physics beyond the two standard models of particle physics and cosmology. As is now known, the by far largest part of our universe's matter/energy content lies in the `dark' and…
Coupling dark energy to dark matter provides one of the simplest way to effectively modify gravity at large scales without strong constraints from local (i.e. solar system) observations. Models of coupled dark energy have been studied…
Possibility of gravitational repulsion in General Relativity is discussed and astronomical data in favor of cosmological acceleration are described. The problem of vacuum energy is emphasized and possible ways of its solution are indicated.…
We consider a hybrid scalar field which is non-minimally coupled to the matter and models a chameleon cosmology. By introducing an effective potential, we study the dependence of the effective potential's minimum and hybrid chameleon…
The scalar-tensor theory of Damour and Esposito-Far\`ese recently gained some renewed interest because of its ability to suppress modifications to General Relativity in the weak field, while introducing large corrections in the strong field…
The chameleon model is a modified gravity theory that introduces an additional scalar field that couples to matter through a conformal coupling. This `chameleon field' possesses a screening mechanism through a nonlinear self-interaction…
We investigate whether interaction between massive neutrinos and quintessence scalar field is the origin of the late time accelerated expansion of the universe. We present cosmological perturbation theory in neutrinos probe interacting…
Theories which modify general relativity to explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe often use screening mechanisms to satisfy constraints on Solar System scales. We investigate the effects of the cosmic web and the local…
We consider different methods to probe chameleons with slow neutrons. Chameleon modify the potential of bouncing neutrons over a flat mirror in the terrestrial gravitational field. This induces a shift in the energy levels of the neutrons…