Related papers: Horndeski in the Swampland
The Horndeski Lagrangian brings together all possible interactions between gravity and a scalar field that yield second-order field equations in four-dimensional spacetime. As originally proposed, it only addresses phenomenology without…
Most existing theories of dark energy and/or modified gravity, involving a scalar degree of freedom, can be conveniently described within the framework of the Effective Theory of Dark Energy, based on the unitary gauge where the scalar…
It is challenging to construct explicit and controllable models that realize de Sitter solutions in string compactifications. This difficulty is the main motivation for the Refined de Sitter Conjecture and the Trans-Planckian Censorship…
Phenomenological functions $\Sigma$ and $\mu$ (also known as $G_{\rm light}/G$ and $G_{\rm matter}/G$) are commonly used to parameterize possible modifications of the Poisson equation relating the matter density contrast to the lensing and…
This article reviews scalar-tensor theories characterized by a Lagrangian that, despite the presence of second order derivatives, contain a single scalar degree of freedom. These theories, known as Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor…
The investigation of the inhomogeneities in modern inflationary Universe scenarios is related, in particular, with the study of the role played by scalar fields in cosmological evolution. We present the model described by one of the…
We provide a general framework for studying the dark energy cosmology in which a scalar field $\phi$ is nonminimally and kinetically coupled to Cold Dark Matter (CDM). The scalar-graviton sector is described by the action of Horndeski…
A Poincar\`{e} invariant, local scalar field theory in which the Lagrangian and the equation of motion contain only up to second-order derivatives of the fields is called generalized Galileon. The covariant version of it in four dimensions…
The (pre)multisymplectic geometry of the De Donder--Weyl formalism for field theories is further developed for a variety of field theories including a scalar field theory from the canonical Klein-Gordon action, the electric and magnetic…
We conjecture a general upper bound on the strength of gravity relative to gauge forces in quantum gravity. This implies, in particular, that in a four-dimensional theory with gravity and a U(1) gauge field with gauge coupling g, there is a…
Recently a swampland criterion has been proposed that rules out de Sitter vacua in string theory. Such a criterion should hold at all points in the field space and especially at points where the system is on-shell. However there has not…
We perform the Hamiltonian analysis of several mimetic gravity models and compare our results with those obtained previously by different authors. We verify that for healthy mimetic scalar-tensor theories the condition for the corresponding…
We investigate the cosmological applications of new gravitational scalar-tensor theories, which are novel modifications of gravity possessing 2+2 propagating degrees of freedom, arising from a Lagrangian that includes the Ricci scalar and…
We consider the gravitational correction to the coupling of the scalar fields. Weak gravity conjecture says that the gravitational correction to the running of scalar coupling should be less than the contribution from scalar fields. For…
We perform a Hamiltonian analysis of a large class of scalar-tensor Lagrangians which depend quadratically on the second derivatives of a scalar field. By resorting to a convenient choice of dynamical variables, we show that the Hamiltonian…
A new approach for embedding the renormalization group running of Newton's constant and cosmological constant in gravity is proposed. This approach is based on a gravitational Lagrangian that gives rise to a new class of modified gravity…
Linear cosmological perturbations of a large class of modified gravity and dark energy models can be unified in the effective field theory of cosmic acceleration, encompassing Horndeski scalar-tensor theories and beyond. The fully available…
The persistent challenge of creating stable de Sitter vacua within string theory undermines the observational validity of the $\Lambda$ cold dark matter (CDM) model. This difficulty suggests that the concordance model of cosmology,…
In the present thesis, using an effective field theory point of view, we explore theories of single-field inflation where higher derivative operators become relevant, affecting in a novel way the dynamics and therefore the observations. For…
In the quasistatic regime, generic modifications to gravity can give rise to novel scale-dependence of the gravitational field equations. Crucially, the detectability of the new scale-dependent terms hinges upon the existence of an…