Related papers: Nonlocal Galileons and Self-Acceleration
Unimodular gravity is an appealing approach to address the cosmological constant problem. In this scenario, the vacuum energy density of quantum fields does not gravitate and the cosmological constant appears merely as an integration…
Few recent generations of cosmologists have solved non-local newtonian equations of the gravitational instability in an expanding universe. In this approach pancaking is the predominant form of first collapsing objects. Relativistic…
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…
We find constrained instantons in Einstein gravity with and without a cosmological constant. These configurations are not saddle points of the Einstein-Hilbert action, yet they contribute to non-perturbative processes in quantum gravity. In…
The ghost-free theory of massive gravity has exact solutions where the effective stress energy generated by the graviton mass term is a cosmological constant for any isotropic metric. Since they are exact, these solutions mimic a…
The cosmological constant problem represents a profound conflict between quantum field theory and general relativity. Unimodular gravity offers a compelling starting point by de-gravitating the vacuum energy of the Standard Model, but this…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
In General Relativity, the issue of defining the gravitational energy contained in a given spatial region is still unresolved, except for particular cases of localized objects where the asymptotic flatness holds for a given spacetime. In…
Normalizing the Einstein-Hilbert action by the volume functional makes the theory invariant under constant shifts in the Lagrangian. The associated field equations then resemble unimodular gravity whose otherwise arbitrary cosmological…
We propose a picture for the UV properties of Galileon field theories. We conjecture that Galileons, and all theories incorporating the Vainshtein mechanism, fall into Jaffe's class of `non-localizable' field theories characterized by an…
We briefly review the problems and prospects of the standard lore of dark energy and notice that the cosmological constant problems are often over emphasized. In order to keep the discussion pedagogical aimed at a wider audience, we have…
According to theoretical physics the cosmological constant (CC) is expected to be much larger in magnitude than other energy densities in the universe, which is in stark contrast to the observed Big Bang evolution. We address this old CC…
We provide a systematic and updated discussion of a research line carried out by our group over the last few years, in which gravity is modified at cosmological distances by the introduction of nonlocal terms, assumed to emerge at an…
The gravitational wave event GW170817 together with its electromagnetic counterparts constrains the speed of gravity to be extremely close to that of light. We first show, on the example of an exact Schwarzschild-de Sitter solution of a…
A brief account of the present status of the recent nonlocal generalization of Einstein's theory of gravitation is presented. The main physical assumptions that underlie this theory are described. We clarify the physical meaning and…
We discuss a consistent theory for a self-interacting vector field, breaking an Abelian symmetry in such a way to obtain an interesting behavior for its longitudinal polarization. In an appropriate decoupling limit, the dynamics of the…
We find and study the properties of black hole solutions for a subclass of Horndeski theory including the cubic Galileon term. The theory under study has shift symmetry but not reflection symmetry for the scalar field. The Galileon is…
We study the cosmology of a galileon scalar-tensor theory, obtained by covariantizing the decoupling lagrangian of the Dvali-Gabadadze-Poratti (DGP) model. Despite being local in 3+1 dimensions, the resulting cosmological evolution is…
We address the stability issue of Ricci-flat and maximally symmetric spacetimes in nonlocal gravity to all perturbative orders in the gravitational perturbation. Assuming a potential at least cubic in curvature tensors but quadratic in the…
The Beyond Horndeski class of alternative gravity theories allow for Self-accelerating de-Sitter cosmologies with no need for a cosmological constant. This makes them viable alternatives to $\Lambda$CDM and so testing their small-scale…