Related papers: How Much NEC Breaking Can the Universe Endure?
We examine the validity of classical energy conditions in nonsingular bouncing cosmological solutions arising in quadratic curvature gravity minimally coupled to a scalar field. Focusing on the null, weak, strong, and dominant energy…
We address the fine-tuning problem of dark energy cosmologies which arises when the dark energy density needs to initially lie in a narrow range in order for its present value to be consistent with observations. As recently noticed, this…
In cyclic cosmology based on phantom dark energy the requirement that our universe satisfy a CBE-condition ({\it Comes Back Empty}) imposes a lower bound on the number $N_{\rm cp}$ of causal patches which separate just prior to turnaround.…
Using Visser's semi-analytical model for the stress-energy tensor corresponding to the conformally coupled massless scalar field in the Unruh vacuum, we examine, by explicitly evaluating the relevant integrals over half-complete geodesics,…
New Cosmic Microwave Background, Galaxy Clustering and Supernovae type Ia data are increasingly constraining the dark energy component of our Universe. While the cosmological constant scenario remains consistent with these new tight…
In this letter, we consider the possibility of reconciling metric theories of gravitation with violation of the conservation of energy-momentum. Under some circumstances, this can be achieved in the context of unimodular gravity, and it…
We find asymptotically anti de Sitter solutions in N=8 supergravity which have negative total energy. This is possible since the boundary conditions required for the positive energy theorem are stronger than those required for finite mass…
One of the fundamental questions of theoretical cosmology is whether the universe can undergo a non-singular bounce, i.e., smoothly transit from a period of contraction to a period of expansion through violation of the null energy condition…
A matter bouncing entropy-corrected cosmological model has been suggested. The model allows only positive curvature with negative pressure and no violation of the null energy condition. The result obtained in this paper is supported by some…
There has been much recent work on quantum inequalities to constrain negative energy. These are uncertainty principle-type restrictions on the magnitude and duration of negative energy densities or fluxes. We consider several examples of…
We study late-time acceleration scenarios using a quintessence field initially trapped in a metastable false vacuum state. The false vacuum has non-zero vacuum energy and could drive exponential expansion if not coupled with gravity. Upon…
I show that in the Boulware vacuum (1) all standard (point-wise and averaged) energy conditions are violated throughout the exterior region---all the way from spatial infinity down to the event horizon, and (2) outside the event horizon the…
The null energy or null convergence condition (NEC) is one of the fundamental assumptions necessary for many celebrated results from Lorentzian Geometry and Mathematical General Relativity. As such there have been several recent efforts to…
In this paper, we give a conceptual explanation of dark energy as a small negative residual scalar curvature present even in empty spacetime. This curvature ultimately results from postulating a discrete spacetime geometry, very closely…
We forecast the expected cosmological constraints from a combination of probes of both the universal expansion rate and matter perturbation growth, in the form of weak lensing tomography, galaxy tomography, supernovae, and the cosmic…
Non-negligible dark energy density at high redshifts would indicate dark energy physics distinct from a cosmological constant or ``reasonable'' canonical scalar fields. Such dark energy can be constrained tightly through investigation of…
We explore the fate of the universe given the possibility that the density associated with `dark energy' may decay slowly with time. Decaying dark energy is modeled by a homogeneous scalar field which couples minimally to gravity and whose…
The stress-energy tensor of the quantum vacuum is studied for the particular case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), that is a fictituous universe where only the electromagnetic and the electron-positron fields exist. The integrals involved…
We use holography to prove the Quantum Null Energy Condition (QNEC) at leading order in large-$N$ for CFTs and relevant deformations of CFTs in Minkowski space which have Einstein gravity duals. Given any codimension-2 surface $\Sigma$…
The Abnormally Weighting Energy (AWE) hypothesis consists of assuming that the dark sector of cosmology violates the weak equivalence principle (WEP) on cosmological scales, which implies a violation of the strong equivalence principle for…