Related papers: Scaling solutions in scalar-tensor cosmologies
The discovery of accelerated cosmic expansion implies that, in addition to the attractive gravity of matter, there exists in our universe some other form of energy (dark energy or cosmological constant) producing a repulsive force. The…
I review the problem of dark energy focusing on the cosmological constant as the candidate and discuss its implications for the nature of gravity. Part 1 briefly overviews the currently popular `concordance cosmology' and summarises the…
In this paper we investigate the cosmological effects of modified gravity with string curvature corrections added to Einstein-Hilbert action in the presence of a dynamically evolving scalar field coupled to Riemann invariants. The scenario…
We study scalar-tensor theory, k-essence and modified gravity with Lagrange multiplier constraint which role is to reduce the number of degrees of freedom. Dark Energy cosmology of different types ($\Lambda$CDM, unified inflation with DE,…
We investigate cosmological scenarios containing one canonical scalar field with an exponential potential in the context of bouncing models, where the bounce happens due to quantum cosmological effects. The only possible bouncing solutions…
Faced by recent evidence for a flat universe dominated by dark energy, cosmologists grapple with deep cosmic enigmas such as the cosmological constant problem, extreme fine-tuning and the cosmic coincidence problem. The extent to which we…
We discuss models that can account for today's dark energy. The underlying cosmological constant may be Planck scale but starts as a redundant coupling which can be eliminated by a field redefinition. The observed vacuum energy arises when…
We investigate the possibility of replacing the cosmological constant with gradual condensation of a scalar field produced during the decay of a superheavy dark matter. The advantage of this class of models to the ordinary quintessence is…
We analyse the role, on large cosmological scales and laboratory experiments, of the leading curvature squared contributions to the low energy effective action of gravity. We argue for a natural relationship $c_0\lambda^2\simeq 1$ at…
The recent simultaneous detection of gravitational waves and a gamma ray burst from a neutron star merger significantly shrank the space of viable scalar-tensor theories by demanding that the speed of gravity is equal to that of light. The…
Motivated by the recent interest in cosmologies arising from energy density modifications to the Friedmann equation, we analyse the scaling behaviour for a broad class of these cosmologies comprised of scalar fields and background…
Scalar quintessence seems epicyclic because one can choose the potential to reproduce any cosmology (I review the construction) and because the properties of this scalar seem to raise more questions than they answer. This is why there has…
We discuss some of the issues which we encounter when we try to invoke the scalar-tensor theories of gravitation as a theoretical basis of quintessence. One of the advantages of appealing to these theories is that they allow us to implement…
This talk is based on my work in collaboration with B. Boisseau, D. Polarski, and A.A. Starobinsky. The most natural and best-motivated alternatives to general relativity are the so-called "scalar-tensor" theories, in which the…
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…
We consider scalar field models of dark energy interacting with dark matter through a coupling proportional to the contraction of the four-derivative of the scalar field with the four-velocity of the dark matter fluid. The coupling is…
We explore in detail a dilatonic scalar-tensor theory of gravity inspired by large extra dimensions, where a radion field from compact extra dimensions gives rise to quintessence in our 4-dimensional world. We show that the model can give…
The problem of dark energy can be roughly stated as the proposition and validation of a cosmological model that can explain the phenomenon of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. This problem is an open discussion topic in modern…
Cosmology struggles with the theoretical problems generated by the observed value and recent emergence of a cosmological constant, in the standard model of cosmology, i.e. the concordance model. We propose to provide a more natural…
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…