Related papers: Bouncing Universes in String-inspired Gravity
The coupling of gravity to dust helps to discover simple quadratic combinations of the gravitational super-Hamiltonian and supermomentum whose Poisson brackets strongly vanish. This leads to a new form of vacuum constraints which generate a…
We consider a class of cosmological models in which the universe is filled with a (non-electric) charge density that repels itself by means of a force carried by a vector boson with a tiny mass. When the vector's mass depends upon other…
Making use of the T-duality symmetry of superstring theory, and of the double geometry from Double Field Theory, we argue that cosmological singularities of a homogeneous and isotropic universe disappear. In fact, an apparent big bang…
We show how taking into account the kinematical effect of extra dimensions can have a significant impact on the gravity wave emission from cosmic strings. Additional dimensions both round off cusps, as well as reduce the probability of…
Ghost-free bimetric gravity is an extension of general relativity, featuring a massive spin-2 field coupled to gravity. We parameterize the theory with a set of observables having specific physical interpretations. For the background…
The following issue is addressed: how the addition of a Gauss-Bonnet term (generically coming from most fundamental theories, as string and M theories), to a viable model, can change the specific properties, and even the physical nature, of…
Cosmological hysteresis, has interesting and vivid implications in the scenario of a cyclic bouncy universe. This, purely thermodynamical in nature, is caused by the asymmetry in the equation of state parameter during expansion and…
Matter collapsing to a singularity in a gravitational field is still an intriguing question. Similar situation arises when discussing the very early universe or a universe recollapsing to a singularity. It is suggested that inclusion of…
In a recent paper it was suggested that inclusion of mutual gravitational interactions among the collapsing particles can avert a singularity and give finite value for various physical quantities. In this paper we extend this idea further…
The ekpyrotic and cyclic universe scenarios have revived the idea that the density perturbations apparent in today's universe could have been generated in a `pre-singularity' epoch before the big bang. These scenarios provide explicit…
Numerous claims in the literature suggest that gravity induced on a higher co-dimensional surface violates unitarity in the weak coupling regime. However, it remained unclear, why a conserved source localized on this surface and giving rise…
A form of infinite derivative gravity is free from ghost-like instabilities with improved small scale behavior. In this theory, we calculate the tree-level scattering amplitude and the corresponding weak field potential energy between two…
We explicitly confirm that spatially flat non-singular bouncing cosmologies make sense as effective theories. The presence of a non-singular bounce in a spatially flat universe implies a temporary violation of the null energy condition,…
Many modern theories which try to unify gravity with the Standard Model of particle physics, as e.g. string theory, propose two key modifications to the commonly known physical theories: i) the existence of additional space dimensions; ii)…
It has been recently proposed that gravity might be an entropic force. Although a well defined fundamental description for such a mechanism is still lacking, it is still possible to address the viability of phenomenological models of…
Cosmology in extended theories of gravity is considered assuming the Palatini variational principle, for which the metric and connection are independent variables. The field equations are derived to linear order in perturbations about the…
We review recent efforts to construct gravitational theories on discrete space-times, usually referred to as the ``consistent discretization'' approach. The resulting theories are free of constraints at the canonical level and therefore…
The early Cosmology driven by a single scalar field, both massless and massive, in the context of Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity, is explored. We show the existence of nonsingular solutions of bouncing and loitering type (depending…
Observations provide increasingly strong evidence that the universe is accelerating. This revolutionary advance in cosmological observations confronts theoretical cosmology with a tremendous challenge, which it has so far failed to meet.…
Recently Gambini and Pullin proposed a new consistent discrete approach to quantum gravity and applied it to cosmological models. One remarkable result of this approach is that the cosmological singularity can be avoided in a general…