Related papers: A reciprocal Wald theorem for varying gravitationa…
We show that a slowly varying Newton's constant, consistent with existing bounds, can potentially explain a host of observations pertaining to gravitational effects or phenomena across distances spanning from planetary to the cosmological,…
We show how the scalar field, a candidate of quintessence, in a proposed model of the scalar-tensor theories of gravity provides a way to understand a small but nonzero cosmological constant as indicated by recent observations. A particular…
Possible analogies between vacuum state and quantum fluid provide a model to study vacuum energy density induced by thermal corrections, space-time curvature, boundary conditions and quantum back-reaction. We find that vacuum energy density…
We consider a self-gravitating, rigidly rotating charged perfect fluid immersed in the Wald magnetosphere, constructed out of two linearly independent Killing vectors present in stationary and axially-symmetric spacetimes. We show that in…
We explore two hypotheses. First, the possibility that the quantum vacuum energy density of the Casimir effect contributes to a (local) gravitational vacuum energy density. Second, the possibility that a change in the gravitational coupling…
Bianchi type V perfect fluid cosmological models are investigated with cosmological term $\Lambda$ varying with time. Using a generation technique (Camci {\it et al.}, 2001), it is shown that the Einstein's field equations are solvable for…
We analyze the properties of a generic cosmological fluid described by the van der Waals equation of state. Exact solutions for the energy density evolution are found as implicit functions of the scale factor for a flat…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
We study the cosmological evolution of scalar fields with arbitrary potentials in the presence of a barotropic fluid (matter or radiation) without making any assumption on which term dominates. We determine what kind of potentials V(phi)…
We investigate tachyon dynamics with an inverse power-law potential $V(\phi) \propto \phi^{-\alpha}$. We find global attractors of the dynamics leading to a dust behaviour for $\alpha > 2$ and to an accelerating universe for $0 < \alpha \le…
Witten has presented an argument for the vanishing of the cosmological constant in 2+1 dimensions. This argument is crucially tied to the specific properties of (2+1)-dimensional gravity. We argue that this reasoning can be deconstructed to…
We study flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmological models for a scalar field coupled nonminimally to teleparallel gravity with generic coupling and potential functions. The goal of this paper is to determine the conditions under…
Self-similar, spherically symmetric cosmological models with a perfect fluid and a scalar field with an exponential potential are investigated. New variables are defined which lead to a compact state space, and dynamical systems methods are…
We show that the cosmological constant appears as a Lagrange multiplier if nature is described by a canonical noncommutative spacetime. It is thus an arbitrary parameter unrelated to the action and thus to vacuum fluctuations. The…
Large scale features of a randomly isotropically forced incompressible and unbounded rotating fluid are examined in perturbation theory. At first order in both the random force amplitude and the angular velocity we find two types of…
We obtain expressions for the shear and the vorticity tensors of perfect-fluid spacetimes, in terms of the divergence of the Weyl tensor. For such spacetimes, we prove that if the gradient of the energy density is parallel to the velocity,…
We show that the cosmological large number coincidence can be interpreted as giving the filling factor in a Landau problem. The analogy with the Landau problem leads naturally to the noncommutativity of the gravitational and matter degrees…
The standard model of elementary particle physics and the theory of general relativity can be extended by the introduction of a vacuum variable which is responsible for the near vanishing of the present cosmological constant (vacuum energy…
We present an alternative nonconservative gravitational theory based on the Herglotz variational principle in a fully covariant form. The present model may be seen as an improvement of the theory proposed in Ref. [Lazo et al, Phys. Rev. D…
We describe gauge theories which allow to retrieve a large class of gravitational theories, including, MacDowell-Mansouri gravity and its topological extension to Loop Quantum Gravity via the Pontrjagin characteristic class involving the…