Related papers: Cosmological constraints on unimodular gravity mod…
We investigate the evolution of cosmological perturbations in models of dark energy described by a time-like unit normalized vector field specified by a general function $\mathcal{F}(\mathcal{K})$, so-called Generalized Einstein-Aether…
While observational cosmology has shown tremendous growth over the last decade, deep mysteries continue to haunt our theoretical understanding of the ingredients of the concordance cosmological model, which are mainly `dark'. More than 95…
One regime where we might see departures from general relativity is at the largest accessible scales, with a natural choice in cosmology being the cosmological horizon (or Hubble) scale. We investigate a single-parameter extension to the…
We propose a technically natural scenario whereby an initially large cosmological constant (c.c.) is relaxed down to the observed value due to the dynamics of a scalar evolving on a very shallow potential. The model crucially relies on a…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
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…
Theoretical and observational challenges to standard cosmology such as the cosmological constant problem and tensions between cosmological model parameters inferred from different observations motivate the development and search of new…
A dynamical resolution to the cosmological constant fine-tuning problem has been previously put forward, based on a scalar-tensor gravitational theory possessing de Sitter attractor solutions characterized by a small Hubble expansion rate,…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
A Planck scale inflationary era -- in a quantum gravity theory predicting discreteness of quantum geometry at the fundamental scale -- produces the scale invariant spectrum of inhomogeneities with very small tensor-to-scalar ratio of…
Ever since the Planck satellite measured the the cosmic microwave background (CMB) down to arcminute angular scales, the mismatch between the CMB-inferred value of the Hubble constant and the value inferred from the distance ladder (i.e.,…
Unimodular gravity is based on a modification of the usual Einstein-Hilbert action that allows one to recover general relativity with a dynamical cosmological constant. It also has the interesting property of providing, as the momentum…
We use all available baryon acoustic oscillation distance measurements and Hubble parameter data to constrain the cosmological constant $\Lambda$, dynamical dark energy, and spatial curvature in simple cosmological models. We find that the…
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
All observational evidence for dark matter and dark energy is so far exclusively gravitational. Hence, the dark sector may be equivalently described by a theory of the spacetime metric whose dynamics is affected by interactions with an…
An effective theory of gravity in the infrared is proposed, which involves the determinant of the metric relative to the determinant of a prior metric taken to be that of Minkowski spacetime. This effective theory can be interpreted as a…
Much of modern cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous on sufficiently large scales, but it remains worthwhile to examine cosmological models that violate this principle…
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…
The cosmological constant problem represents a profound conflict between quantum field theory and general relativity. Unimodular gravity offers a compelling starting point by de-gravitating the vacuum energy of the Standard Model, but this…
The simplest cosmological model ($\Lambda$CDM) is well-known to suffer from the Hubble tension, namely an almost $5 \sigma$ discrepancy between the (model-based) early-time determination of the Hubble constant $H_0$ and its late-time (and…