3 research outputs found
Modified-Source Gravity and Cosmological Structure Formation
One way to account for the acceleration of the universe is to modify general
relativity, rather than introducing dark energy. Typically, such modifications
introduce new degrees of freedom. It is interesting to consider models with no
new degrees of freedom, but with a modified dependence on the conventional
energy-momentum tensor; the Palatini formulation of theories is one
example. Such theories offer an interesting testing ground for investigations
of cosmological modified gravity. In this paper we study the evolution of
structure in these ``modified-source gravity'' theories. In the linear regime,
density perturbations exhibit scale dependent runaway growth at late times and,
in particular, a mode of a given wavenumber goes nonlinear at a higher redshift
than in the standard CDM model. We discuss the implications of this
behavior and why there are reasons to expect that the growth will be cut off in
the nonlinear regime. Assuming that this holds in a full nonlinear analysis, we
briefly describe how upcoming measurements may probe the differences between
the modified theory and the standard CDM model.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, uses iopart styl
The accelerating universe and a limiting curvature proposal
We consider the hypothesis of a limiting minimal curvature in gravity as a
way to construct a class of theories exhibiting late-time cosmic acceleration.
Guided by the minimal curvature conjecture (MCC) we are naturally lead to a set
of scalar tensor theories in which the scalar is non-minimally coupled both to
gravity and to the matter Lagrangian. The model is compared to the Lambda Cold
Dark Matter concordance model and to the observational data using the gold
SNeIa sample of Riess et. al. (2004). An excellent fit to the data is achieved.
We present a toy model designed to demonstrate that such a new, possibly
fundamental, principle may be responsible for the recent period of cosmological
acceleration. Observational constraints remain to be imposed on these models.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures; revised version to appear in JCAP; references
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Reconstruction of the Scalar-Tensor Lagrangian from a LCDM Background and Noether Symmetry
We consider scalar-tensor theories and reconstruct their potential U(\Phi)
and coupling F(\Phi) by demanding a background LCDM cosmology. In particular we
impose a background cosmic history H(z) provided by the usual flat LCDM
parameterization through the radiation (w_{eff}=1/3), matter (w_{eff}=0) and
deSitter (w_{eff}=-1) eras. The cosmological dynamical system which is
constrained to obey the LCDM cosmic history presents five critical points in
each era, one of which corresponding to the standard General Relativity (GR).
In the cases that differ from GR, the reconstructed coupling and potential are
of the form F(\Phi)\sim \Phi^2 and U(\Phi)\sim F(\Phi)^m where m is a constant.
This class of scalar tensor theories is also theoretically motivated by a
completely independent approach: imposing maximal Noether symmetry on the
scalar-tensor Lagrangian. This approach provides independently: i) the form of
the coupling and the potential as F(\Phi)\sim \Phi^2 and U(\Phi)\sim F(\Phi)^m,
ii) a conserved charge related to the potential and the coupling and iii)
allows the derivation of exact solutions by first integrals of motion.Comment: Added comments, discussion, references. 15 revtex pages, 5 fugure