Related papers: New Setting for Spontaneous Gauge Symmetry Breakin…
A scalar theory of gravity extending Newtonian gravity to include field energy as its source is developed. The physical implications of the theory are probed through its spherically symmetric (source) solutions. The aim is to demonstrate…
Scalar fields have had a long and controversial life in gravity theories, having progressed through many deaths and resurrections. The first scientific gravity theory, Newton's, was that of a scalar potential field, so it was natural for…
The scalar-tensor theory of gravitation has been and still is one of the most widely discussed "alternative theories" to General Relativity (GR). Despite nearly half a century of its age, it continues to attract renewed interests of not…
A new approach to the cosmological constant problem is proposed by modifying Einstein's theory of general relativity, using instead a scalar-tensor theory of gravitation. This theory of gravity crucially incorporates the concept of quantum…
This article is a review of modern approaches to gravity that treat the gravitational interaction as a type of gauge theory. The purpose of the article is twofold. First, it is written in a colloquial style and is intended to be a…
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
Effective gravitational field theories with background fields break local Lorentz symmetry and diffeomorphism invariance. Examples include Chern-Simons gravity, massive gravity, and the Standard-Model Extension (SME). The physical…
The usual derivation of Einstein's field equations from the Einstein--Hilbert action is performed by silently assuming the metric tensor's symmetric character. If this symmetry is not assumed, the result is a new theory, such as Einstein's…
On his way to General Relativity (GR) Einstein gave several arguments as to why a special relativistic theory of gravity based on a massless scalar field could be ruled out merely on grounds of theoretical considerations. We re-investigate…
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…
We discuss some of the issues which we encounter when we try to invoke the scalar-tensor theories of gravitation as a theoretical basis of quintessence. One of the advantages of appealing to these theories is that they allow us to implement…
We generalize the scale invariant gravity by allowing a negative kinetic energy term for the classical scalar field. This gives birth to a new scalar-tensor theory of gravity, in which the scalar field is in fact an auxiliary field. For a…
We discuss possible variations of the effective gravitational constant with length scale, predicted by most of alternative theories of gravity and unified models of physical interactions. After a brief general exposition, we review in more…
The modified Gauss-Bonnet gravity can be motivated by a number of physical reasons, including: the uniqueness of a gravitational Lagrangian in four and higher dimensions and the leading order $\alpha^\prime$ corrections in superstring…
As is well known, Einstein was dissatisfied with the foundation of quantum theory and sought to find a basis for it that would have satisfied his need for a causal explanation. In this paper this abandoned idea is investigated. It is found…
Just like the vector bosons in Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories, gravitons can attain mass by spontaneous local symmetry breaking. The question is whether this can happen in a Lorentz-invariant way. We consider the use of four scalar…
We construct effective field theories in which gravity is modified via spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz invariance. This is a gravitational analogue of the Higgs mechanism. These theories possess additional graviton modes and modified…
The most prominent realization of gravity as a gauge theory similar to the gauge theories of the standard model comes from enlarging the gauge group from the Lorentz group to the de Sitter group. To regain ordinary Einstein-Cartan gravity…
The recent interest in modified theories of gravity, involving some type of non-minimal coupling to the Ricci scalar, and the calculation of cosmological observables in the Einstein or the Jordan frame, motivate the formulation of these…
Gauge symmetries play a central role, both in the mathematical foundations as well as the conceptual construction of modern (particle) physics theories. However, it is yet unclear whether they form a necessary component of theories, or…