Ghost Cosmology: Exact Solutions, Transitions Between Standard Cosmologies and Ghost Dark Energy/Matter Evolution

The recently proposed infrared modification of gravity through the introduction of a ghost scalar field results in a number of interesting cosmological and phenomenological implications. In this paper, we derive the exact cosmological solutions for a number of scenarios where at late stages, the ghost behaves like dark matter, or dark energy. The full solutions give valuable information about the non-linear regime beyond the asymptotic first order analysis presented in the literature. The generic feature is that these ghost cosmologies give rise to smooth transitions between radiation dominated phases (or more general power-law expansions) at early epochs and ghost dark matter resp. ghost dark energy dominated late epochs. The current age of our universe places us right at the non-linear transition phase. By studying the evolution backwards in time, we find that the dominance of the ghost over ordinary baryonic matter and radiative contributions persists back to the earliest times such that the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker geometry is dictated to a good approximation by the ghost alone. We also find that the Jeans instability occurs in the ghost dark energy scenario at late times, while it is absent in the ghost dark matter scenario.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures; added references, clarified a few minor point

On the infrared behaviour of Gluons and Ghosts in Ghost-Antighost symmetric gauges

To investigate the possibility of a ghost-antighost condensate the coupled Dyson--Schwinger equations for the gluon and ghost propagators in Yang--Mills theories are derived in general covariant gauges, including ghost-antighost symmetric gauges. The infrared behaviour of these two-point functions is studied in a bare-vertex truncation scheme which has proven to be successful in Landau gauge. In all linear covariant gauges the same infrared behaviour as in Landau gauge is found: The gluon propagator is infrared suppressed whereas the ghost propagator is infrared enhanced. This infrared singular behaviour provides indication against a ghost-antighost condensate. In the ghost-antighost symmetric gauges we find that the infrared behaviour of the gluon and ghost propagators cannot be determined when replacing all dressed vertices by bare ones. The question of a BRST invariant dimension two condensate remains to be further studied.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

A Ghost Story: Ghosts and Gluons in the IR regime of QCD

We discuss the different methods to obtain reliable informations about the deep infra-red behaviour of the gluon and ghost Green functions in QCD. We argue that a clever combination of analytical inputs and numerical ones is necessary. We illustrate this statement about the distinction between two classes of solutions of the ghost propagator Dyson-Schwinger equation (GPDSE). We conclude that the solution II ("decoupling") with a finite renormalised ghost dressing function at zero momentum is strongly favored by lattice QCD, We derive a method to solve numerically the GPDSE using lattice inputs concerning the gluon propagator. We derive an analytical small momentum expansion of the Ghost dressing function. We prove from the large cut-off behaviour of the ghost propagator renormalisation constant, $\widetilde Z_3$, that the bare ghost dressing function is infinite at the infinite cut-off limit.Comment: 12 pages 6 figure

Quintessence Ghost Dark Energy Model

A so called "ghost dark energy" was recently proposed to explain the present acceleration of the universe expansion. The energy density of ghost dark energy, which originates from Veneziano ghost of QCD, is proportional to the Hubble parameter, $\rho_D=\alpha H$, where $\alpha$ is a constant which is related to the QCD mass scale. In this paper, we establish the correspondence between ghost dark energy and quintessence scalar field energy density. This connection allows us to reconstruct the potential and the dynamics of the quintessence scalar field according to the evolution of ghost energy density.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, version to appear in Europhys. Let