Related papers: Cosmology with a light ghost
We address the question of how one can modify the inflationary tensor spectrum without changing at all the successful predictions on the curvature perturbation. We show that this is indeed possible, and determine the two quadratic curvature…
We investigate cosmological inflationary scenarios from a gravitoelectromagnetic theory. Our work is formulated in the light of a recently introduced geometrical Weyl-Invariant scalar-tensor theory of gravity, where the nature of both the…
We show that if the masses of timelike fields are point-dependent quantities transforming under conformal transformations as $m\rightarrow\Omega^{-1}m$, so the energy density of perfect fluids transforms as $\rho\rightarrow\Omega^{-4}\rho$,…
We show that on the average, homogeneous and isotropic scalar field and on the average homogeneous and isotropic ensembles of classical and quantum gravitational waves generate the de Sitter expansion of the empty (with no matter)…
We introduce a new Weyl-invariant and generally-covariant vector-tensor theory with higher derivatives. This theory can be induced by extending the mimetic construction to vector fields of conformal weight four. We demonstrate that in…
We study a nonsingular bounce inflation model, which can drive the early universe from a contracting phase, bounce into an ordinary inflationary phase, followed by the reheating process. Besides the bounce that avoided the Big-Bang…
Dark energy constraints have forced viable alternatives that differ substantially from a cosmological constant Lambda to have an equation of state w that evolves across the phantom divide set by Lambda. Naively, crossing this divide makes…
This is a brief review of modified gravity cosmologies. Generically extensions of gravity action involve higher derivative terms, which can result in ghosts and instabilities. There are three ways to circumvent this: Chern-Simons terms,…
We consider an effective field theory description of gravity coupled to a scalar field with volume-preserving diffeomorphism and Weyl invariances. The smallness of the cosmological constant is achieved when the potential of the scalar is…
The world view suggested by quantum cosmology is that inflating universes with all possible values of the fundamental constants are spontaneously created out of nothing. I explore the consequences of the assumption that we are a `typical'…
We investigate the tensor and the scalar perturbations in the symmetric bouncing universe driven by one ordinary field and its Lee-Wick partner field which is a ghost. We obtain the even- and the odd-mode functions of the tensor…
We have investigated a cosmological model with variable speed of light (c), gravitational constant (G) and cosmological constant (Lambda). The model is shown to solve the horizon, flatness and monopole problems of the early universe. We…
We show that Inflation in a False Vacuum becomes viable in the presence of a spectator scalar field non minimally coupled to gravity. The field is unstable in this background, it grows exponentially and slows down the pure de Sitter phase…
Quadratic gravity is a fourth-order (in derivatives) theory that can serve as an attractive upgrade to the standard description of gravity provided by General Relativity, thanks to its renormalizability and its built-in description of…
A cubic correction of $f(T)$ gravity, where $T$ is the teleparallel scalar torsion, is considered to describe gravity in spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model. A scale factor permitting departure from inflation era has been…
The cosmology of general fourth order corrections to Einstein gravity is considered, both for a homogeneous and isotropic background and for general tensor perturbations. It is explicitly shown how the standard cosmological history can be…
We consider a scenario of cosmological inflation coming from a grand unified theory in higher dimensional orbifold. Flatness of the potential is automatically guaranteed in this orbifold setup thanks to the nonlocality of the Wilson line on…
We investigated the possibility of construction the homogeneous and isotropic cosmological solutions in Weyl geometry. We derived the self-consistency condition which ensures the conformal invariance of the complete set of equations of…
We study the physical propagating modes in a massive gravity model in curved cosmological backgrounds, which we have found as classical solutions in our previous paper. We show that, generically, there exist such the cosmological background…
We heal the cosmological constant problem by means of a \emph{cancellation mechanism} that adopts a phase transition during which quantum fluctuations are eliminated. To this purpose, we propose that a generalized scalar (dark) matter field…