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We construct an effective action for gravity in which all homogeneous solutions are nonsingular. In particular, there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch. The action is a higher derivative modification of Einstein's theory constructed in…
The paper uses geometrical arguments to derive equations with relevance for cosmology; 5-dimensional spacetime is assumed because it has been shown in other works to provide a setting for significant unification of different areas of…
The modified gravity, which eliminates the need for dark energy and which seems to be stable, is considered. The terms with positive powers of the curvature support the inflationary epoch while the terms with negative powers of the…
We employ a linear stability analysis approach to explore the dynamics of matter and curvature-driven dark energy interactions within the framework of two types of viable $f(R)$ gravity models. The interaction is modeled via a source term…
I present a model of discrete gravity, which is formulated in terms of a topological gauge theory with defects. The theory has no local degrees of freedom and the gravitational field is trivial everywhere except at a number of colliding…
We live at a time of contradictory messages about how successfully we understand gravity. General Relativity seems to work very well in the Earth's immediate neighborhood, but arguments abound that it needs modification at very small and/or…
A straightforward method to compute Hamilton's density for theories that are linear in the spacetime curvature is provided. It is shown that the lapse function and shift vector still give rise to primary constraints, while the induced…
Any theory of quantum gravity must ultimately be connected to observations. This demand is difficult to be met due to the high energies at which we expect the quantum nature of gravity to become manifest. Here we study, how viable quantum…
It is known that the cosmological constant can be dynamically tuned to an arbitrary small value in classes of scalar tensor theories. The trouble with such schemes is that effective gravity itself vanishes. We explore the possibility of…
Mimetic gravity has emerged as a compelling extension of General Relativity (GR), originally motivated by the attempt to isolate the conformal degree of freedom of the gravitational field. By reparametrizing the physical metric in terms of…
We examine higher-curvature gravities whose FLRW configurations are specified by equations of motion which are of second order in derivatives, just like in Einstein gravity. We name these theories Cosmological Gravities and initiate a…
We investigate the problem of metric fluctuations in the presence of the vacuum fluctuations of matter fields and critically assess the usual assertion that vacuum energy implies a Planckian cosmological constant. A new stochastic classical…
As we shall briefly recall, Nordstr\"om's theory of gravity is observationally ruled out. It is however an interesting example of non-minimal coupling of matter to gravity and of the role of conformal transformations. We show in particular…
We argue that the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity arising in the $M^2 \to 0$ limit of the massive graviton through an explicit Pauli-Fierz mass term could be absent in anti de Sitter space. This is possible if the graviton can…
We extend the thermodynamic derivation of gravity in the Jacobson framework by generalizing the Clausius relation through a nontrivial entropy functional. We show that entropy deformations appear as modifications of the effective…
Modifications to gravity that add additional functions of the Ricci curvature to the Einstein-Hilbert action -- collectively known as $f(R)$ theories -- have been studied in great detail. When considered as complete theories of gravity they…
We examine the role of consistency with causality and quantum mechanics in determining the properties of gravitation. We begin by examining two different classes of interacting theories of massless spin 2 particles -- gravitons. One…
In this paper we study the most general covariant action of gravity up to terms that are quadratic in curvature. In particular this includes non-local, infinite derivative theories of gravity which are ghost-free and exhibit asymptotic…
This work investigates alternative theories of gravity, the solutions to their field equations and the constraints that can be imposed upon them from observation and experiment. Specifically, we consider the cosmologies and spherically…
A theory of gravity in higher dimensions is considered. The usual Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented with Lovelock terms, of higher order in the curvature tensor. These terms are important for the low energy action of string theories.…