Constraining Horava-Lifshitz gravity from neutrino speed experiments

We constrain Horava-Lifshitz gravity using the results of OPERA and ICARUS neutrino speed experiments, which show that neutrinos are luminal particles, examining the fermion propagation in the earth's gravitational field. In particular, investigating the Dirac equation in the spherical solutions of the theory, we find that the neutrinos feel an effective metric with respect to which they might propagate superluminally. Therefore, demanding not to have superluminal or subluminal motion we constrain the parameters of the theory. Although the excluded parameter regions are very narrow, we find that the detailed balance case lies in the excluded region.Comment: 5 pages, no figure, version published at Gen.Rel.Gra

Ricci-Gauss-Bonnet holographic dark energy

We present a model of holographic dark energy in which the Infrared cutoff is determined by both the Ricci and the Gauss-Bonnet invariants. Such a construction has the significant advantage that the Infrared cutoff, and consequently the holographic dark energy density, does not depend on the future or the past evolution of the universe, but only on its current features, and moreover it is determined by invariants, whose role is fundamental in gravitational theories. We extract analytical solutions for the behavior of the dark energy density and equation-of-state parameters as functions of the redshift. These reveal the usual thermal history of the universe, with the sequence of radiation, matter and dark energy epochs, resulting in the future to a complete dark energy domination. The corresponding dark energy equation-of-state parameter can lie in the quintessence or phantom regime, or experience the phantom-divide crossing during the cosmological evolution, and its asymptotic value can be quintessence-like, phantom-like, or be exactly equal to the cosmological-constant value. Finally, we extract the constraints on the model parameters that arise from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, version published in Phys. Rev.

Gravity's Rainbow: a bridge towards Horava-Lifshitz gravity

We investigate the connection between Gravity's Rainbow and Horava-Lifshitz gravity, since both theories incorporate a modification in the UltraViolet regime which improves their quantum behavior at the cost of the Lorentz invariance loss. In particular, extracting the Wheeler-De Witt equations of the two theories in the case of Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker and spherically symmetric geometries, we establish a correspondence that bridges them.Comment: 20 page

Phantom without ghost

The Nine-Year WMAP results combined with other cosmological data seem to indicate an enhanced favor for the phantom regime, comparing to previous analyses. This behavior, unless reversed by future observational data, suggests to consider the phantom regime more thoroughly. In this work we provide three modified gravitational scenarios in which we obtain the phantom realization without the appearance of ghosts degrees of freedom, which plague the naive approaches on the subject, namely the Brans-Dicke type gravity, the scalar-Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, and the $F(R)$ gravity, which are moreover free of perturbative instabilities. The phantom regime seems to favor the gravitational modification instead of the universe-content alteration.Comment: LaTeX 7 pages, version published in Astrophys.Space Sc

Dynamics of the anisotropic Kantowsky-Sachs geometries in RnR^n gravity

We construct general anisotropic cosmological scenarios governed by an $f(R)$ gravitational sector. Focusing then on Kantowski-Sachs geometries in the case of $R^n$-gravity, and modelling the matter content as a perfect fluid, we perform a detailed phase-space analysis. We find that at late times the universe can result to a state of accelerating expansion, and additionally, for a particular $n$-range ($2<n<3$) it exhibits phantom behavior. Furthermore, isotropization has been achieved independently of the initial anisotropy degree, showing in a natural way why the observable universe is so homogeneous and isotropic, without relying on a cosmic no-hair theorem. Moreover, contracting solutions have also a large probability to be the late-time states of the universe. Finally, we can also obtain the realization of the cosmological bounce and turnaround, as well as of cyclic cosmology. These features indicate that anisotropic geometries in modified gravitational frameworks present radically different cosmological behaviors comparing to the simple isotropic scenarios.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures. Revised and updated versio