Related papers: A naturally light dilaton
We present a class of simple scalar-tensor models of gravity with one scalar field (dilaton $\Phi$) and only one unknown function (cosmological potential $U(\Phi)$). These models might be considered as a stringy inspired ones with broken…
Classical and quantum complex nonlinear scalar fields are considered. A new approach to the quantization of nonlinear fields and the construction of a perturbation theory with allowance for spontaneous symmetry breaking is proposed, based…
We investigate vector perturbations with holonomy corrections in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Conditions to achieve anomaly freedom for these perturbations are found at all orders. This requires the introduction of counter-terms…
We study how to obtain a sufficiently flat inflaton potential that is natural from the particle physics point of view. Supersymmetry, which is broken during inflation, cannot protect the potential against non-renormalizable operators…
We solve Einstein's equation with Robertson-Walker metric as an initial-value problem, using as the source of gravity a Halpern-Huang real scalar field, which was derived from renormalization-group analysis, with a potential that exhibits…
It is stressed that the kinematical problems of the standard cosmological model can be solved by a phase of accelerated contraction of the cosmic scale factor. Such a behaviour is only a particular case of a more general ``pre-big-bang"…
Considering the linearized gravity with matter fields, the effective potential of the ``conformal dilaton'' in the string frame is generated semiclassically by one-loop contribution of heavy matter fields. This in turn generates a…
The dynamical consequences of a bimetric scalar-tensor theory of gravity with a dynamical light speed are investigated in a cosmological setting. The model consists of a minimally-coupled self-gravitating scalar field coupled to ordinary…
The cosmological consequences of a simple scalar field model for the generation of Newton's constant through the spontaneous breaking of scale invariance in a curved space-time are again presented and discussed. Such a model leads to a…
The dynamical behaviour of domain boundaries between different realizations of the vacuum of scalar fields with spontaneously broken phases is investigated. They correspond to zero-modes of the Goldstone fields, moving with the speed of…
We discuss mimetic gravity theories with direct couplings between the curvature and higher derivatives of the scalar field, up to the quintic order, which were proposed to solve the instability problem for linear perturbations around the…
In a recent paper we demonstrated how the simplest model for varying alpha may be interpreted as the effect of a dielectric material, generalized to be consistent with Lorentz invariance. Unlike normal dielectrics, such a medium cannot…
The principles of quantum field theory in flat spacetime suggest that gravity is mediated by a massless particle with helicity $\pm2$, the so-called graviton. It is regarded as textbook knowledge that, when the self-coupling of a particle…
The possibility of mass in the context of scale-invariant, generally covariant theories, is discussed. Scale invariance is considered in the context of a gravitational theory where the action, in the first order formalism, is of the form $S…
The aim of this chapter is to explain in clear and pedagogical terms how some particle-physics models and/or mechanisms can naturally lead to inflation and how this can provide testable predictions that can help us find new physics effects.…
The violation of the general covariance is proposed as a resource of the gravitational dark matter. The minimal violation of the covariance to the unimodular one is associated with the massive scalar graviton as the simplest representative…
Treating the gravitational field as a dynamical field, we study the spontaneous symmetry breaking induced by a scalar field under its self-interaction and non-minimal interaction with gravity in four dimensional space-time. In particular,…
We present time-dependent analytic solutions to the Einstein equations coupled with a dilaton (scalar) field. The background geometry for the solutions is a product of an N-dimensional spherically symmetric space and a d-dimensional flat…
There are indications that some theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking also feature a light scalar in their spectrum, with a mass comparable to the one of the Goldstone modes. In this paper, we perform the one-loop renormalization of a…
Considering a self-interaction only of mirror fermions in the context of a lattice-regularized fermion field theory, we show that the system undergoes spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry and mirror-fermion masses are generated. However,…