Related papers: Cosmological gravity probes: connecting recent the…
With the advent of gravitational-wave astronomy marked by the aLIGO GW150914 and GW151226 observations, a measurement of the cosmological speed of gravity will likely soon be realized. We show that a confirmation of equality to the speed of…
Scalar fields have played an important role in the development of the fundamental theories of physics as well as in other branches of physics such as gravitation and cosmology. For a long time these escaped detection until 2012 year when…
Theories of dark energy and modified gravity can be strongly constrained by astrophysical or cosmological observations, as illustrated by the recent observation of the gravitational wave event GW170817 and of its electromagnetic counterpart…
Finding effective theories of modified gravity that can resolve cosmological singularities and avoid other physical pathologies such as ghost and gradient instabilities has turned out to be a rather difficult task. The concept of limiting…
Horndeski gravity holds a special position as the most general extension of Einstein's theory of general relativity with a single scalar degree of freedom and second-order field equations. Because of these features, Horndeski gravity is an…
Gravitational wave (GW) constraints have recently been used to significantly restrict models of dark energy and modified gravity. New bounds arising from GW decay and GW-induced dark energy instabilities are particularly powerful in this…
Recent anomalies found in cosmological datasets such as the low multipoles of the Cosmic Microwave Background or the low redshift amplitude and growth of clustering measured by e.g., abundance of galaxy clusters and redshift space…
This thesis is devoted to the study of gravitational theories which can be seen as modifications or generalisations of General Relativity. The motivation for considering such theories, stemming from Cosmology, High Energy Physics and…
I briefly discuss the challenges presented by attempting to modify general relativity to obtain an explanation for the observed accelerated expansion of the universe. Foremost among these are the questions of theoretical consistency - the…
We investigate the radiative stability of Horndeski scalar-tensor theories with luminally propagating gravitational waves (as extensively discussed in the wake of GW170817) and show that in general there is a tension between obtaining…
Possible models of modified gravity are being extensively studied now, with most phenomenological motivations coming from puzzles and tensions in cosmology due to a natural desire to better fit the known and newly coming data. At the same…
We present constraints on modified gravity from a cosmic shear analysis of the final data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-Legacy) in combination with DESI measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations, eBOSS observations of redshift…
We construct gravitational modifications that go beyond Horndeski, namely theories with extended nonminimal derivative couplings, in which the coefficient functions depend not only on the scalar field but also on its kinetic energy. Such…
After a decade and a half of research motivated by the accelerating universe, theory and experiment have a reached a certain level of maturity. The development of theoretical models beyond \Lambda, or smooth dark energy, often called…
This thesis investigates modified teleparallel gravity models with a scalar field and teleparallel boundary terms, focusing on their cosmological implications for late-time cosmic acceleration. Teleparallel gravity, is an alternative to…
The observed accelerated expansion of the Universe may be explained by dark energy or the breakdown of general relativity (GR) on cosmological scales. When the latter case, a modified gravity scenario, is considered, it is often assumed…
Various gravity theories beyond general relativity have been rigorously investigated in the literature such as Horndeski and degenerate higher-order scalar-tensor (DHOST) theories. In general, numerous model parameters are involved in such…
We review recent developments and results in testing general relativity (GR) at cosmological scales. The subject has witnessed rapid growth during the last two decades with the aim of addressing the question of cosmic acceleration and the…
Theories of gravity in the beyond Horndeski class encompass a wide range of scalar-tensor theories that will be tested on cosmological scales over the coming decade. In this work, we investigate the possibility of testing them in the…
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…