Related papers: Cosmology with a light ghost
We propose a phenomenological approach to the cosmological constant problem based on generally covariant non-local and acausal modifications of four-dimensional gravity at enormous distances. The effective Newton constant becomes very small…
We argue that Lee-Wick's complex ghost appearing in any higher derivative theory is stable and its asymptotic field exists. It may be more appropriate to call it ``anti-unstable" in the sense that, the more the ghost `decays' into lighter…
A conservative extension of general relativity by integrable Weyl geometry is formulated, and a new class of cosmological models ({\em Weyl universes}) is introduced and studied. A short discussion of how these new models behave in the…
A unified description of inflation, dark energy, and dark matter is presented within a two-scalar-field cosmological model. Inflation, assumed to be of the warm type, is driven by one of the scalar fields, which, shortly after the end of…
Our Universe has an arrow of time. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, entropy has been increasing ever since the Big Bang. The fact that matter is in thermal equilibrium in the very early Universe, as indicated by the…
In this paper, we investigate three important issues: stability, ghost and strong coupling, in the Horava-Melby-Thompson setup of the Horava-Lifshitz theory with $\lambda \not= 1$, generalized recently by da Silva. We first develop the…
In this chapter we review the recent developments of realizing $R^2$-like inflation in the framework of a most general UV nonlocal extension of Einstein's general theory of relativity (GR). It is a well-motivated robust approach towards…
Cosmological perturbation theory is the theory of fluctuations (scalar as well as tensor) around the inflationary cosmological background solution. It is important to understand the details of the process of renormalization in this theory.…
We study the inflationary perturbations in general (classically) scale-invariant theories. Such scenario is motivated by the hierarchy problem and provides natural inflationary potentials and dark matter candidates. We analyse in detail all…
We study a scale-invariant model of quadratic gravity with a non-minimally coupled scalar field. We focus on cosmological solutions and find that scale invariance is spontaneously broken and a mass scale naturally emerges. Before the…
Previously defined covariant and gauge-invariant perturbation variables, representing, e.g., the fractional spatial energy density gradient on hypersurfaces of constant expansion, are used to simplify the linear perturbation analysis of a…
We combine the unimodular gravity and mimetic gravity theories into a unified theoretical framework, which is proposed to provide a suggestive proposal for a framework that may assist in the discussion and solution search of the…
A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating tolopogical…
It is shown that gravitation naturally emerges from the standard model of particle physics if local scale invariance is imposed in the context of a single conformal (Weyl-symmetric) theory. Gravitation is then conformally-related to the…
The cosmological constant problem and the compatibility of gravity with quantum mechanics are the two most pressing problems in all of gravitational theory. While string theory nicely addresses the latter, it has so far failed to provide…
Production of gravitational vacuum defects and their contribution to the energy density of our Universe are discussed. These topological microstructures (defects) could be produced in the result of creation of the Universe from "nothing"…
Scalar fields, $\phi_i$ can be coupled non-minimally to curvature and satisfy the general criteria: (i) the theory has no mass input parameters, including the Planck mass; (ii) the $\phi_i$ have arbitrary values and gradients, but undergo a…
In this paper we study a novel realization of inflation, based on Weyl invariant gravity with torsion. We show that requiring the classical action for the scalar field to be Weyl invariant introduces a dilaton which induces a non trivial…
We explore the nonlinear dynamics of classical field theories containing ghost degrees of freedom, focusing on two coupled scalar fields with opposite kinetic terms in (1+1) and (2+1) dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Using a spacetime…
We propose a new class of $f(R)$ theory where its Weyl gauge symmetry is broken in the primordial era of the universe. This symmetry forces one to adopt a new scalar field, namely a Weyl field and a gauge vector boson. Furthermore, an…