Related papers: Cosmology after Phantom Crossing by Horndeski Grav…
Recent observations suggest that the cosmological equation-of-state parameter w is close to -1. To say this is to imply that w could be slightly less than -1, which leads to R.Caldwell's "Phantom cosmologies". These often have the property…
While observational cosmology has recently progressed fast, it revealed a serious dilemma called dark energy: an unknown source of exotic energy with negative pressure driving a current accelerating phase of the universe. All attempts so…
Higher derivative scalar interactions can give rise to interesting cosmological scenarios. We present a complete classification of such operators that can yield sizeable effects without introducing ghosts and, at the same time, define an…
A possible solution to the dark energy problem is that Einstein's theory of general relativity is modified. A suite of models have been proposed that, in general, are unable to predict the correct amount of large scale structure in the…
Quantum gravity is expected to be necessary in order to understand situations where classical general relativity breaks down. In particular in cosmology one has to deal with initial singularities, i.e. the fact that the backward evolution…
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 late-time cosmic acceleration may be due to infra-red modifications of General Relativity. In particular, we consider a maximal extension of the Hilbert-Einstein action and analyze several interesting features of the theory. Generally,…
We develop new modified cosmological scenarios by applying the first law of thermodynamics at the Universe horizon, utilizing a new entropic functional that generalizes the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy. In particular, starting…
The nature of dark energy is one of the fundamental problems in cosmology. Introduced to explain the apparent acceleration of the Universe's expansion, its origin remains to be determined. In this paper, we illustrate a result that may…
We propose a new dark energy model for solving the cosmological fine-tuning and coincidence problems. A default assumption is that the fine-tuning problem disappears if we do not interpret dark energy as vacuum energy. The key idea to…
The acceleration of the expansion of the universe represents one of the major challenges to our current understanding of fundamental physics. In principle, to explain this phenomenon, at least two different routes may be followed: either…
Linear cosmological perturbations of a large class of modified gravity and dark energy models can be unified in the effective field theory of cosmic acceleration, encompassing Horndeski scalar-tensor theories and beyond. The fully available…
In generalized Proca theories, characterized by a vector field with broken $U(1)$ gauge invariance, late-time cosmic acceleration can be realized with a dark energy equation of state in the regime $w_{\rm DE} < -1$. In such scenarios,…
The acceleration of the universe can be explained either through dark energy or through the modification of gravity on large scales. In this paper we investigate modified gravity models and compare their observable predictions with dark…
We study the cosmological evolution of a scalar field in Horndeski gravity, assuming that the scalar field is subdominant with respect to the cosmic fluid. We first analyse the most general shift-symmetric action that respects local Lorentz…
We show that if the masses of timelike fields are point-dependent quantities transforming under conformal transformations as $m\rightarrow\Omega^{-1}m$, so the energy density of perfect fluids transforms as $\rho\rightarrow\Omega^{-4}\rho$,…
We present modified cosmological scenarios that arise from the application of the "gravity-thermodynamics" conjecture, using the Barrow entropy instead of the usual Bekenstein-Hawking one. The former is a modification of the black hole…
Rather than obtaining cosmic acceleration with a scalar field potential (quintessence) or noncanonical kinetic term (k-essence), we can do it purely through a modified gravity braiding of the scalar and metric, i.e. the $G_3$ Horndeski…
In scalar-tensor Horndeski theories, nonsingular cosmological models - bounce and genesis - are problematic because of potential ghost and/or gradient instabilities. One way to get around this obstacle is to send the effective Planck mass…
In this paper we consider FRW cosmology in modified gravity which contain arbitrary functions $f(\phi)$. It is shown that the bouncing solution appears in the model whereas the equation of state (EoS) parameter crosses the phantom divider.…