Stealth Acceleration and Modified Gravity

We show how to construct consistent braneworld models which exhibit late time acceleration. Unlike self-acceleration, which has a de Sitter vacuum state, our models have the standard Minkowski vacuum and accelerate only in the presence of matter, which we dub ``stealth-acceleration''. We use an effective action for the brane which includes an induced gravity term, and allow for an asymmetric set-up. We study the linear stability of flat brane vacua and find the regions of parameter space where the set-up is stable. The 4-dimensional graviton is only quasi-localised in this set-up and as a result gravity is modified at late times. One of the two regions is strongly coupled and the scalar mode is eaten up by an extra symmetry that arises in this limit. Having filtered the well-defined theories we then focus on their cosmology. When the graviton is quasi-localised we find two main examples of acceleration. In each case, we provide an illustrative model and compare it to LambdaCDM.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure

Consistent perturbations in an imperfect fluid

We present a new prescription for analysing cosmological perturbations in a more-general class of scalar-field dark-energy models where the energy-momentum tensor has an imperfect-fluid form. This class includes Brans-Dicke models, f(R) gravity, theories with kinetic gravity braiding and generalised galileons. We employ the intuitive language of fluids, allowing us to explicitly maintain a dependence on physical and potentially measurable properties. We demonstrate that hydrodynamics is not always a valid description for describing cosmological perturbations in general scalar-field theories and present a consistent alternative that nonetheless utilises the fluid language. We apply this approach explicitly to a worked example: k-essence non-minimally coupled to gravity. This is the simplest case which captures the essential new features of these imperfect-fluid models. We demonstrate the generic existence of a new scale separating regimes where the fluid is perfect and imperfect. We obtain the equations for the evolution of dark-energy density perturbations in both these regimes. The model also features two other known scales: the Compton scale related to the breaking of shift symmetry and the Jeans scale which we show is determined by the speed of propagation of small scalar-field perturbations, i.e. causality, as opposed to the frequently used definition of the ratio of the pressure and energy-density perturbations.Comment: 40 pages plus appendices. v2 reflects version accepted for publication in JCAP (new summary of notation, extra commentary on choice of gauge and frame, extra references to literature

Curing singularities in cosmological evolution of F(R) gravity

We study $F(R)$ modified gravity models which are capable of driving the accelerating epoch of the Universe at the present time whilst not destroying the standard Big Bang and inflationary cosmology. Recent studies have shown that a weak curvature singularity with $|R|\to\infty$ can arise generically in viable $F(R)$ models of present dark energy (DE) signaling an internal incompleteness of these models. In this work we study how this problem is cured by adding a quadratic correction with a sufficiently small coefficient to the $F(R)$ function at large curvatures. At the same time, this correction eliminates two more serious problems of previously constructed viable $F(R)$ DE models: unboundedness of the mass of a scalar particle (scalaron) arising in $F(R)$ gravity and the scalaron overabundance problem. Such carefully constructed models can also yield both an early time inflationary epoch and a late time de Sitter phase with vastly different values of $R$. The reheating epoch in these combined models of primordial and present dark energy is completely different from that of the old $R + R^{2}/6M^{2}$ inflationary model, mainly due to the fact that values of the effective gravitational constant at low and intermediate curvatures are different for positive and negative $R$. This changes the number of e-folds during the observable part of inflation that results in a different value of the primordial power spectrum index.Comment: Discussion expanded, references added, results unchanged, accepted for publication in JCAP. A minor typo in Eq. (2.14) has been correcte

Second-order matter density perturbations and skewness in scalar-tensor modified gravity models

We study second-order cosmological perturbations in scalar-tensor models of dark energy that satisfy local gravity constraints, including f(R) gravity. We derive equations for matter fluctuations under a sub-horizon approximation and clarify conditions under which first-order perturbations in the scalar field can be neglected relative to second-order matter and velocity perturbations. We also compute the skewness of the matter density distribution and find that the difference from the LCDM model is only less than a few percent even if the growth rate of first-order perturbations is significantly different from that in the LCDM model. This shows that the skewness provides a model-independent test for the picture of gravitational instability from Gaussian initial perturbations including scalar-tensor modified gravity models.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, version to appear in JCA

Low energy effective theory on a regularized brane in 6D gauged chiral supergravity

We derive the low energy effective theory on a brane in six-dimensional chiral supergravity. The conical 3-brane singularities are resolved by introducing cylindrical codimension one 4-branes whose interiors are capped by a regular spacetime. The effective theory is described by the Brans-Dicke (BD) theory with the BD parameter given by $\omega_{\rm BD}=1/2$. The BD field is originated from a modulus which is associated with the scaling symmetry of the system. If the dilaton potentials on the branes preserve the scaling symmetry, the scalar field has an exponential potential in the Einstein frame. We show that the time dependent solutions driven by the modulus in the four-dimensional effective theory can be lifted up to the six-dimensional exact solutions found in the literature. Based on the effective theory, we discuss a possible way to stabilize the modulus to recover standard cosmology and also study the implication for the cosmological constant problem.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Cosmological evolution, future singularities, Little Rip and Pseudo-Rip in viable f(R) theories and their scalar-tensor counterpart

Modified f(R) gravity is one of the most promising candidates for dark energy, and even for the unification of the whole cosmological evolution, including the inflationary phase. Within this class of theories, the so-called viable modified gravities represent realistic theories that are capable of reproducing late-time acceleration, and satisfy strong constraints at local scales, where General Relativity is recovered. The present manuscript deals with the analysis of the cosmological evolution for some of these models, which indicates that the evolution may enter into a phantom phase, but the behavior may be asymptotically stable. Furthermore, the scalar-tensor equivalence of f(R) gravity is considered, which provides useful information about the possibility of the occurrence of a future singularity. The so-called Little Rip and Pseudo-Rip are also studied in the framework of this class of modified gravities.Comment: 20 pages. Extended version, new figures and additional analysis. Version to be published in Class. Quant. Gra