Quantum Gravity and the Large Scale Anomaly

The spectrum of primordial perturbations obtained by calculating the quantum gravitational corrections to the dynamics of scalar perturbations is compared with Planck 2013 and BICEP2/{\it Keck Array} public data. The quantum gravitational effects are calculated in the context of a Wheeler-De Witt approach and have quite distinctive features. We constrain the free parameters of the theory by comparison with observations.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; the analysis has been updated with the combined Planck-BICEP2/Keck Array public data. Final version, accepted for publication in JCA

Signatures of Quantum Gravity in a Born-Oppenheimer Context

We solve a general equation describing the lowest order corrections arising from quantum gravitational effects to the spectrum of cosmological fluctuations. The spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations are calculated to first order in the slow roll approximation and the results are compared with the most recent observations. The slow roll approximation gives qualitatively new quantum gravitational effects with respect to the pure de Sitter case.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; final version accepted for publication in PL

Inflation and Quantum Gravity in a Born-Oppenheimer Context

A general equation, describing the lowest order corrections coming from quantum gravitational effects to the spectrum of cosmological scalar fluctuations is obtained. These corrections are explicitly estimated for the case of a de Sitter evolution.Comment: 13 pages, no figures. Final version, accepted for publication in PL

Reconstruction of Scalar Potentials in Induced Gravity and Cosmology

We develop a technique for the reconstruction of the potential for a scalar field in cosmological models based on induced gravity. The potentials reproducing cosmological evolutions driven by barotropic perfect fluids, a cosmological constant, a Chaplygin gas and a modified Chaplygin gas are constructed explicitly.Comment: 14 pages, no figures. Final version published in PL

Dynamical Dark Energy and Spontaneously Generated Gravity

We study the cosmological evolution of an induced gravity model with a scale symmetry breaking potential for the scalar field. The radiation to matter transition, following inflation and reheating, influences the dynamics of such a field through its non minimal coupling. We illustrate how, under certain conditions on the potential, such a dynamics can lead to a suitable amount of dark energy explaining the present accelerated expansion.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Vacuum energy and spectral function sum rules

We reformulate the problem of the cancellation of the ultraviolet divergencies of the vacuum energy, particularly important at the cosmological level, in terms of a saturation of spectral function sum rules which leads to a set of conditions on the spectrum of the fundamental theory. We specialize the approach to both Minkowski and de Sitter space-times and investigate some examples.Comment: 11 pages, revtex4, no figures, version to be published on PR

Phantom universe from CPT symmetric QFT

Inspired by the generalization of quantum theory for the case of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with CPT symmetry, we construct a simple classical cosmological scalar field based model describing a smooth transition from ordinary dark energy to the phantom one

Quantum cosmology with big-brake singularity

We investigate a cosmological model with a big-brake singularity in the future: while the first time derivative of the scale factor goes to zero, its second time derivative tends to minus infinity. Although we also discuss the classical version of the model in some detail, our main interest lies in its quantization. We formulate the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and derive solutions describing wave packets. We show that all such solutions vanish in the region of the classical singularity, a behaviour which we interpret as singularity avoidance. We then discuss the same situation in loop quantum cosmology. While this leads to a different factor ordering, the singularity is there avoided, too.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, figures improved, references added, conceptual clarifications include

Classical and quantum Big Brake cosmology for scalar field and tachyonic models

We study a relation between the cosmological singularities in classical and quantum theory, comparing the classical and quantum dynamics in some models possessing the Big Brake singularity - the model based on a scalar field and two models based on a tachyon-pseudo-tachyon field . It is shown that the effect of quantum avoidance is absent for the soft singularities of the Big Brake type while it is present for the Big Bang and Big Crunch singularities. Thus, there is some kind of a classical - quantum correspondence, because soft singularities are traversable in classical cosmology, while the strong Big Bang and Big Crunch singularities are not traversable.Comment: final version, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Networks of cosmological histories, crossing of the phantom divide line and potentials with cusps

We discuss the phenomenon of the smooth dynamical gravity induced crossing of the phantom divide line in a framework of simple cosmological models where it appears to occur rather naturally, provided the potential of the unique scalar field has some kind of cusp. The behavior of cosmological trajectories in the vicinity of the cusp is studied in some detail and a simple mechanical analogy is presented. The phenomenon of certain complementarity between the smoothness of the spacetime geometry and matter equations of motion is elucidated. We introduce a network of cosmological histories and qualitatively describe some of its properties