Related papers: On the Null Energy Condition and Cosmology
We investigate the cosmological evolution of an interacting phantom energy model in which the phantom field has interaction with the dark matter. We discuss the existence and stability of scaling solutions for two types of specific…
We explore the possibility that theories with negative kinetic energy (ghosts) can be meta-stable up to cosmologically long times. In classical mechanics, ghosts undergo spontaneous lockdown rather than run-away if weakly-coupled and…
Violation of the null energy condition plays an important role both in the general theory of relativity and quantum field theory in curved spacetimes. Over the years, it has been shown that the violation of the null energy condition leads…
The weakly-coupled heterotic string is known to have problems of dilaton/moduli stabilization, supersymmetry breaking (by hidden-sector gaugino condensation), gauge coupling unification (or the Newton's constant), QCD axion, as well as…
In this paper we revisit the dynamical dark energy model building based on single scalar field involving higher derivative terms. By imposing a degenerate condition on the higher derivatives in curved spacetime, one can select the models…
Dynamical dark energy has gained renewed interest due to recent theoretical and observational developments. In the present paper, we focus on a string-motivated dark energy set-up, and perform a detailed cosmological analysis of exponential…
We propose a novel branch of the Galilean Genesis scenario as an alternative to inflation, in which the universe starts expanding from Minkowski in the asymptotic past with a gross violation of the null energy condition (NEC). This variant,…
Traversable wormhole solutions in General Relativity require exotic matter sources that violate the null energy condition (NEC), and such behavior maybe avoided in modified gravity. In this study, we analyze the energy conditions for…
We study in this paper the perturbations of the quintom dark energy model and the effects of quintom perturbations on the current observations. Quintom describes a scenario of dark energy where the equation of state gets across the…
We propose a string-inspired model which correlates several aspects of particle physics and cosmology. Inspired by the flat directions and the absence of adjoint Higgs representations found in typical string models, we consider a no-scale…
Cosmic strings, topological defects predicted by high-energy theories, may contribute to the late-time expansion of the Universe, effectively mimicking dynamical dark energy. We investigate four phenomenological extensions of the…
We discuss vacuum energy in string and M-theory with a focus on heterotic M-theory. In the latter theory a mechanism is described for maintaining zero vacuum energy after supersymmetry breaking. Higher-order corrections can be expected to…
We study a model for a non-singular cosmic bounce in N=1 supergravity, based on supergravity versions of the ghost condensate and cubic Galileon scalar field theories. The bounce is preceded by an ekpyrotic contracting phase which prevents…
We show that violation of the null energy condition implies instability in a broad class of models, including classical gauge theories with scalar and fermionic matter as well as any perfect fluid. When applied to the dark energy, our…
This essay elucidates recent achievements of the "nongravitating vacuum energy" (NGVE) theory" which has the feature that a shift of the Lagrangian density by a constant does not affect dynamics. In the first order formalism, a constraint…
It is extraordinary that a number of observations indicate that we live in a spatially flat, low matter density Universe, which is currently undergoing a period of accelerating expansion. The effort to explain this current state has focused…
Future cosmological surveys will probe the expansion history of the universe and constrain phenomenological models of dark energy. Such models do not address the fine-tuning problem of the vacuum energy, i.e. the cosmological constant…
The averaged null energy conditions (ANEC) states that, along a complete null curve, the negative energy fluctuations of a quantum field must be balanced by positive energy fluctuations. We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to prove the ANEC…
We consider a local phenomenological model to explain a non-local gravity scenario which has been proposed to address dark energy issues. This non-local gravity action has been seen to fit the data as well as $\Lambda$-CDM and therefore…
We carry out a Bayesian model selection analysis of different dark energy parametrizations using the recent luminosity distance data of high redshift supernovae from Riess et al. 2007 and from the new ESSENCE Supernova Survey. Including…