Related papers: Stability Conditions in the Generalized SU(2) Proc…
We study whether a violation of the null energy condition necessarily implies the presence of instabilities. We prove that this is the case in a large class of situations, including isotropic solids and fluids relevant for cosmology. On the…
We introduce a novel set of stability conditions for vacua with broken Lorentz symmetry. The first class of conditions require that the energy be minimized under small geometric deformations, which translates into requiring the positivity…
We study the stability of static, spherically symmetric solutions of Rastall's theory in the presence of a scalar field with respect to spherically symmetric perturbations. It is shown that the stability analysis is inconsistent in the…
We study a model for a non-singular cosmic bounce in N=1 supergravity, based on supergravity versions of the ghost condensate and cubic Galileon scalar field theories. The bounce is preceded by an ekpyrotic contracting phase which prevents…
We present a detailed study of the viability of general vector-tensor theories of gravity in the presence of an arbitrary temporal background vector field. We find that there are six different classes of theories which are indistinguishable…
We present a new class of nonsingular bounce cosmology free from instabilities, using a single scalar field coupled to gravity within the framework of the Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor (DHOST) theories. In this type of scenarios,…
In this work we present the general differential geometry of a background in which the space-time has both torsion and curvature with internal symmetries being described by gauge fields, and that is equipped to couple spinorial matter…
Recently Horava proposed a renormalizable gravity theory with higher derivatives by abandoning the Lorenz invariance in UV. But there have been confusions regarding the extra scalar graviton mode and the consistency of the Horava model. I…
We study stability properties of kinks for the (1+1)-dimensional nonlinear scalar field theory models \begin{equation*} \partial_t^2\phi -\partial_x^2\phi + W'(\phi) = 0, \quad (t,x)\in\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}. \end{equation*} The orbital…
To date, different alternative theories of gravity, although related, involving Proca fields have been proposed. Unfortunately, the procedure to obtain the relevant terms in some formulations has not been systematic enough or exhaustive,…
We reconsider the construction of general derivative self-interactions for a massive Proca field. The constructed Lagrangian is such that the vector field propagates at most three degrees of freedom, thus avoiding the ghostly nature of a…
In the context of f(R) theories of gravity, we study the cosmological evolution of scalar perturbations by using a completely general procedure. We find that the exact fourth-order differential equation for the matter density perturbations…
In this paper we provide the criteria for any generally covariant, parity preserving, and torsion free theory of gravity to possess a stable de Sitter (dS) or anti-de Sitter (AdS) background. By stability we mean the absence of tachyonic or…
We explicitly carry out the symplectic quantization of a family of multi-field Generalized Proca (GP) electrodynamics theories. In the process, we provide an independent derivation of the so-called secondary constraint enforcing relations…
A cosmological model is formulated in the context of a scalar-tensor theory of gravity in which the entire cosmic background evolution is due to a complex scalar field evolving in Minkowski spacetime, such that its (dimensional) modulus is…
We propose a class of theories that can limit scalars constructed from the extrinsic curvature. Applied to cosmology, this framework allows us to control not only the Hubble parameter but also anisotropies without the problem of…
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…
A complete analysis of the dynamics of the Hu-Sawicki modification to General Relativity is presented. In particular, the full phase-space is given for the case in which the model parameters are taken to be n=1, c1=1, and several stable de…
We propose and study a new first order version of the ghost-free massive gravity. Instead of metrics or tetrads, it uses a connection together with Plebanski's chiral 2-forms as fundamental variables, rendering the phase space structure…
We study the cosmology of a generalized Galileon field $\phi$ with five covariant Lagrangians in which $\phi$ is replaced by general scalar functions $f_{i}(\phi)$ (i=1,...,5). For these theories, the equations of motion remain at…