Related papers: The String Dilaton and a Least Coupling Principle
It is pointed out that string-loop effects may generate matter couplings for the dilaton allowing this scalar partner of the tensorial graviton to stay massless while contributing to macroscopic gravity in a way naturally compatible with…
String-loop effects may generate very weak matter couplings for a (massless) dilaton. We examine limits on the shift of such a dilaton toward its present equilibrium value from big-bang nucleosynthesis and the binary pulsar. On the other…
Experimental discovery of the dilaton would provide strong evidence for string theory. A light dilaton could show up in current tests of the inverse square law for gravity at sub-millimeter distances. In the large extra dimension scenario,…
One of the few firm predictions of string theory is the existence of a massless scalar field coupled to gravity, the dilaton. In its presence, the value of the fundamental constants of the universe, such as the fine-structure constant, will…
We consider the dilaton in the strong string coupling limit and elaborate on the original idea of Damour and Polyakov whereby the dilaton coupling to matter has a minimum with a vanishing value at finite field-value. Combining this type of…
In string theory the coupling ``constants'' appearing in the low-energy effective Lagrangian are determined by the vacuum expectation values of some (a priori) massless scalar fields (dilaton, moduli). This naturally leads one to expect a…
One of the clear predictions of string theory is the presence of a dynamical scalar partner of the spin-2 graviton, known as the dilaton. This will violate the Einstein Equivalence Principle, leading to a plethora of possibly observable…
We explore a version of the cosmological dilaton-fixing and decoupling mechanism in which the dilaton-dependence of the low-energy effective action is extremized for infinitely large values of the bare string coupling $g_s^2 = e^{\phi}$. We…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level. All the basic structures of…
The requirement that the laws of physics must be invariant under point-dependent transformations of the units of length, time, and mass is used as a selection principle while studying different generic effective theories of gravity. Thereof…
We study a string-inspired dilaton cosmology in the Damour--Polyakov (DP) regime using dynamical-systems methods, aiming to make explicit how cosmological relaxation controls deviations from the equivalence principle. Working in the…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level or better. All the basic structures…
In this paper, we show that there exists a class of dilaton models with non-trivial scalar-Ricci and scalar-matter couplings that strongly reduces observational deviations from general relativity in the dust limit. Essentially, depending on…
We propose a framework where the string scale as well as all compact dimensions are at the electroweak scale $\sim$ TeV$^{-1}$. The weakness of gravity is attributed to the small value of the string coupling $g_s \sim 10^{-16}$, presumably…
In a recently proposed scenario, where the dilaton decouples while cosmologically attracted towards infinite bare string coupling, its residual interactions can be related to the amplitude of density fluctuations generated during inflation,…
The effects of noncommutativity and of the existence of a minimal length on the phase space of a dilatonic cosmological model are investigated. The existence of a minimum length, results in the Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP), which…
A criterion to seek for compatibility of any given matter coupling with a fundamental theory of physics - assumed here to be the string theory - is developed. We call this criterion as"`compatibility check", and apply it to test different…
A model of matter-coupled gravity in two dimensions is quantized. The crucial requirement for performing the quantization is the vanishing of the conformal anomaly, which is achieved by tuning a parameter in the interaction potential. The…
In this paper, we present extensively the observational consequences of massless dilaton theories at the post-Newtonian level. We extend previous work by considering a general model including a dilaton-Ricci coupling as well as a general…
We consider the physical implications of very light axiodilatons motivated by a novel mechanism to substantially reduce the vacuum energy proposed in arXiv:2110.10352. We address the two main problems concerning the light axiodilaton that…