Related papers: Jeans' Ghost
We show that general infrared modifications of the Einstein-Hilbert action obtained by addition of curvature invariants are not viable. These modifications contain either ghosts or light gravity scalars. A very specific fine-tuning might…
The late-time accelerated expansion of the universe could be caused by a scalar field that is screened on small scales, as in chameleon or symmetron scenarios. We present an analogy between thin shell configurations of such scalar fields…
$f(Q)$ gravity is an extension of the symmetric teleparallel equivalent to general relativity (STEGR). This work shows that based on the scalar-nonmetricity formulation, a scalar mode in $f(Q)$ gravity has a negative kinetic energy. This…
We study linearized massive gravity on the de Sitter background. With a small-enough graviton mass this may have had relevance to inflation, or the present-day cosmic acceleration. Higuchi has shown that this theory has a ghost as long as…
It is shown that any homogeneous and isotropic universe, independently of its spatial topology and matter content, allows for the presence of a conformal stealth, i.e. a nontrivial conformally invariant scalar field with vanishing…
Using the non-canonical model of scalar field, the cosmological consequences of a pervasive, self-interacting, homogeneous and rolling scalar field are studied. In this model, the scalar field potential is nonlinear and decreases in…
We show that $f(Q)$ cosmology with a non-trivial connection, namely the Connection II of the literature, is dynamically equivalent with a quintom-like model. In particular, we show that the scalar field arising from the non-linear $f(Q)$…
We study a metric cubic gravity theory considering odd-parity modes of linear inhomogeneous perturbations on a spatially homogeneous Bianchi type I manifold close to the isotropic de Sitter spacetime. We show that in the regime of small…
We consider late-time cosmology in a (phantom) scalar-tensor theory with an exponential potential, as a dark energy model with equation of state parameter close to -1 (a bit above or below this value). Scalar (and also other kinds of)…
The quanta of phantom dark energy models are negative energy particles, whose maximum magnitude of energy $|E|$ must be less than a cutoff $\Lambda\lesssim 20\,$MeV. They are produced by spontaneous decay of the vacuum into phantoms plus…
A necessary condition for a generally covariant scalar-tensor theory to be ghostfree is that it contains no extra degrees of freedom in the unitary gauge, in which the Lagrangian corresponds to the spatially covariant gravity. Comparing…
Motivated by some recent speculative attempts to model the dark energy, scalar fields with negative kinetic energy coupled to gravity without a cosmological constant are considered. It is shown that in the presence of an ordinary fluid, any…
Phantom fields with negative kinetic energy are often plagued by the vacuum quantum instability in the ultraviolet region. We present a Lorentz-violating dark energy model free from this problem and show that the crossing of the…
We disclose remarkable features of the scalar-tensor theory with the derivative coupling of the scalar field to the curvature in the Palatini formalism. Using the disformal transformations, we show that this theory is free from Otrogradski…
It is well known that a canonical scalar field is able to describe either dark matter or dark energy but not both. We demonstrate that a non-canonical scalar field can describe both dark matter and dark energy within a unified setting. We…
We study the creation of high energy SM particles in the Starobinsky model of dark energy (a variant of F(R)-gravity) inside the regions contracting due to the Jeans instability. In this modification of gravity the additional degree of…
The scalar field can behave like a fluid with equation of state $p_{\phi}=w\rho_{\phi}$, where $w \in [-1,1]$. In this Letter we derive a class of the scalar field potentials for which $w=$ const. Scalar field with such a potential can…
We discuss the quantum-mechanical scattering of a massless scalar field on a $\delta$-potential in a ghost-free theory and obtain analytic solutions for the scattering coefficients. Due to the non-locality of the ghost-free theory the…
Assuming the existence of supra luminal matter, referred to as 'tachyonic', we reconsider possible Lorentz style transformations between tachyon observers and sub luminal ('braydons') observers. We consider a unique possibility following…
Current cosmological data seem to show that dark energy is evolving in time and that it possibly crossed the phantom divide in the past. So far the only theories that lead to such a behavior involve a non-trivial coupling between dark…