Related papers: Collective scalarization or tachyonization: when a…
In gravity theories that exhibit spontaneous scalarization, astrophysical objects are identical to their general relativistic counterpart until they reach a certain threshold in compactness or curvature. Beyond this threshold, they acquire…
In a subclass of scalar-tensor theories, it has been shown that standard general relativity solutions of neutron stars and black holes with trivial scalar field profiles are unstable. Such an instability leads to solutions which are…
Although general relativity passes all precision tests to date, there are several reasons to go beyond the current model of gravitation and search for new fundamental physics. This means looking for new, so far undetected, fields. Scalars…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity are extensions of General Relativity (GR) including an extra, nonminimally coupled scalar degree of freedom. A wide class of these theories, albeit indistinguishable from GR in the weak field regime,…
A decade ago, it was shown that a wide class of scalar-tensor theories can pass very restrictive weak field tests of gravity and yet exhibit non-perturbative strong field deviations away from General Relativity. This phenomenon was called…
Spontaneous scalarization is a mechanism that endows relativistic stars and black holes with a nontrivial configuration only when their spacetime curvature exceeds some threshold. The standard way to trigger spontaneous scalarization is via…
The recent observations of neutron star mergers have changed our perspective on scalar- tensor theories of gravity, favouring models where gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. In this work we consider a scalar-tensor set-up…
We identify a class of scalar-tensor theories with coupling between the scalar and the Gauss-Bonnet invariant that exhibit spontaneous scalarization for both black holes and compact stars. In particular, these theories formally admit all of…
Spontaneous scalarization is a mechanism that allows a scalar field to go undetected in weak gravity environments and yet develop a nontrivial configuration in strongly gravitating systems. At the perturbative level it manifests as a…
We study phenomenological features and stability of boson stars in massless and massive scalar-tensor theory of gravity with Damour-Esposito-Farese coupling. This coupling between the tensor and scalar sectors of the theory leads to a…
Scalarization is a mechanism that endows strongly self-gravitating bodies, such as neutron stars and black holes, with a scalar-field configuration. It resembles a phase transition in that the scalar configuration appears only when a…
We search for viable f(R) theories of gravity, making use of the equivalence between such theories and scalar-tensor gravity. We find that models can be made consistent with solar system constraints either by giving the scalar a high mass…
We discuss the effect of curvature and matter inhomogeneities on the averaged scalar curvature of the present-day Universe. Motivated by studies of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies, we contemplate on the question whether it is sensible to…
We study the role that tachyon fields may play in cosmology as compared to the well-established use of minimally coupled scalar fields. We first elaborate on a kind of correspondence existing between tachyons and minimally coupled scalar…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity modify General Relativity by introducing a scalar field that couples non-minimally to the metric tensor, while satisfying the weak-equivalence principle. These theories are interesting because they have the…
As a low energy effective field theory, classical General Relativity receives an infrared relevant modification from the conformal trace anomaly of the energy-momentum tensor of massless, or nearly massless, quantum fields. The local form…
In the macroscopic gravity approach to the averaging problem in cosmology, the Einstein field equations on cosmological scales are modified by appropriate gravitational correlation terms. We study the averaging problem within the class of…
Spontaneous scalarization is an interesting mechanism for modification of gravity by nonminimal coupling of a scalar field to matter or curvature invariants in the context of scalar-tensor theories, and its onset is signaled by linear…
We explore a family of generalised scalar-tensor theories that exhibit self-tuning to low scale anti de Sitter vacua, even in the presence of a large cosmological constant. We are able to examine the linearised fluctuations about these…
We study in the physical frame the phenomenon of spontaneous scalarization that occurs in scalar-tensor theories of gravity for compact objects. We discuss the fact that the phenomenon occurs exactly in the regime where the Newtonian…