Related papers: Moduli Fields as Quintessence and the Chameleon
The stability of scalar quintessence potentials under quantum fluctuations is investigated both for uncoupled models and models with a coupling to fermions. We find that uncoupled models are usually stable in the late universe. However, a…
The stability of scalar quintessence potentials under quantum fluctuations is investigated for both uncoupled models and models with a coupling to fermions. We find that uncoupled models are usually stable in the late universe. However, the…
In gravity mediated models and in particular in models with strongly stabilized moduli, there is a natural hierarchy between gaugino masses, the gravitino mass and moduli masses: $m_{1/2} \ll m_{3/2} \ll m_{\phi}$. Given this hierarchy, we…
We study the gravitational collapse of an overdensity of nonrelativistic matter under the action of gravity and a chameleon scalar field. We show that the spherical collapse model is modified by the presence of a chameleon field. In…
In chameleon gravity, there exists a light scalar field that couples to the trace of the stress-energy tensor in such a way that its mass depends on the ambient matter density, and the field is screened in local, high-density environments.…
In light of the recent work by Sen and Gibbons, we present a phase-plane analysis on the cosmology containing a rolling tachyon field in a potential resulted from string theory. We show that there is no stable point on the phase-plane,…
It is claimed that in the unimodular gravity framework the observational fact of exponential expansion of the universe cannot be taken as evidence for the presence for a cosmological constant or similar quintessence.
Heterotic orbifold compactifications yield a myriad of models that reproduce many properties of the supersymmetric extension of the standard model and provide potential solutions to persisting problems of high energy physics, such as the…
We examine the late-time (nucleosynthesis and later) cosmological implications of brane-world scenarios having large (millimeter sized) extra dimensions. In particular, recent proposals for understanding why the extra dimensions are so…
We show that even in the simple framework of pure Kaluza-Klein gravity the shape moduli can generate potentials supporting inflation and/or quintessence. Using the shape moduli as the inflaton or quintessence-field has the additional…
Extensions of the gravity theory in order to obtain traceless field equations have been widely considered in the literature. The leading example of such class of theories is the unimodular gravity, but there are other possibilities like the…
Experiments are beginning to probe the interaction of quantum particles with gravitational fields beyond the uniform-field regime. In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the gravitational field in such experiments can be written as a…
The recently proposed chameleonic extension of bigravity theory, by including a scalar field dependence in the graviton potential, avoids several fine-tunings found to be necessary in usual massive bigravity. In particular it ensures that…
One possibility to explain the current accelerated expansion of the universe may be related with the presence of cosmologically evolving scalar whose mass depends on the local matter density (chameleon cosmology). We point out that matter…
Higher-dimensional theories imply that some constants, such as the gravitational constant and the strength of the gauge-couplings, are not fundamental constants. Instead they are related to the sizes of the extra--dimensional space, which…
We point out that the cosmological moduli problem is not necessarily resolved even if the modulus mass is heavier than O(10)TeV, contrary to the common wisdom. The point is that, in many scenarios where the lightest moduli fields are…
Chameleons are scalar fields whose mass depends on the environment, specifically on the ambient matter density. While nearly massless in the cosmos, where the matter density is tiny, their mass is of order of an inverse millimeter on Earth,…
Quintessence models have been widely examined in the context of scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, a subclass of Horndeski's theory, and were proposed as viable candidates for Dark Energy. However, the relatively recent observational constraints…
It has been pointed out that non-singular cosmological solutions in second-order scalar-tensor theories generically suffer from gradient instabilities. We extend this no-go result to second-order gravitational theories with an arbitrary…
We consider quintessence models within 4D effective descriptions of gravity coupled to two scalar fields. These theories are known to give rise to viable models of late-time cosmic acceleration without any need for flat potentials, and so…