Nonlinear, ghost-free massive gravity has two tensor fields; when both are dynamical, the mass of the graviton can lead to cosmic acceleration that agrees with background data, even in the absence of a cosmological constant. Here the question of the stability of linear perturbations in this bimetric theory is examined. Instabilities are presented for several classes of models, and simple criteria for the cosmological stability of massive bigravity are derived. In this way, we identify a particular self-accelerating bigravity model, infinite-branch bigravity (IBB), which exhibits both viable background evolution and stable linear perturbations. We discuss the modified gravity parameters for IBB, which do not reduce to the standard $Λ$CDM result at early times, and compute the combined likelihood from measured growth data and type Ia supernovae. IBB predicts a present matter density $Ω_{m0}=0.18$ and an equation of state $w(z)=-0.79+0.21z/(1+z)$. The growth rate of structure is well-approximated at late times by $f(z)\approxΩ_{m}^{0.47}[1+0.21z/(1+z)]$. The implications of the linear instability for other bigravity models are discussed: the instability does not necessarily rule these models out, but rather presents interesting questions about how to extract observables from them when linear perturbation theory does not hold.
We implement the method developed in [1] to construct the most general parametrised action for linear cosmological perturbations of bimetric theories of gravity. Specifically, we consider perturbations around a homogeneous and isotropic background, and identify the complete form of the action invariant under diffeomorphism transformations, as well as the number of free parameters characterising this cosmological class of theories. We discuss, in detail, the case without derivative interactions, and compare our results with those found in massive bigravity.
Ghost-free bimetric theory describes two nonlinearly interacting spin-2 fields, one massive and one massless, thus extending general relativity. We confront bimetric theory with observations of Supernovae type 1a, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the Cosmic Microwave Background in a statistical analysis, utilising the recently proposed physical parametrisation. This directly constrains the physical parameters of the theory, such as the mass of the spin-2 field and its coupling to matter. We find that all models under consideration are in agreement with the data. Next, we compare these results …
The bimetric generalization of general relativity has been proven to be able to give an accelerated background expansion consistent with observations. Apart from the energy densities coupling to one or both of the metrics, the expansion will depend on the cosmological constant contribution to each of them, as well as the three parameters describing the interaction between the two metrics. Even for fixed values of these parameters can several possible solutions, so called branches, exist. Different branches can give similar background expansion histories for the observable metric, but may have …
We demonstrate that the instabilities in linear cosmological perturbations in bimetric theory are the manifestation of the non-linear Vainshtein mechanism on an FRW background. The spin-2 mass serves as the cosmological Vainshtein scale in this case. This allows us to quantitatively address early universe cosmology. In particular, in a global analysis, we study data from the cosmic microwave background radiation and local measurements of the Hubble flow. We show that bimetric cosmology resolves the discrepancy in the local and early-time measurements of the Hubble scale via an effective phanto…
Recently, Kenna-Allison et.al. claimed that bimetric gravity cannot give rise to a viable cosmological expansion history while at the same time being compatible with local gravity tests. In this note we review that claim and combine various results from the literature to provide several simple counter examples. We conclude that the results of Kenna-Allison et.al. cannot hold in general.
Among the various possibilities to probe the theory behind the recent accelerated expansion of the universe, the energy conditions (ECs) are of particular interest, since it is possible to confront and constrain the many models, including different theories of gravity, with observational data. In this context, we use the ECs to probe any alternative theory whose extra term acts as a cosmological constant. For this purpose, we apply a model-independent approach to reconstruct the recent expansion of the universe. Using Type Ia supernova, baryon acoustic oscillations and cosmic-chronometer data,…
Ghost-free bimetric gravity is an extension of general relativity, featuring a massive spin-2 field coupled to gravity. We parameterize the theory with a set of observables having specific physical interpretations. For the background cosmology and the static, spherically symmetric solutions (for example approximating the gravitational potential of the solar system), there are four directions in the parameter space in which general relativity is approached. Requiring that there is a working screening mechanism and a nonsingular evolution of the Universe, we place analytical constraints on the p…
Bimetric gravity can reproduce the accelerated expansion of the Universe, without a cosmological constant. However, the stability of these solutions to linear perturbations has been questioned, suggesting exponential growth of structure in this approximation. We present a simple model of structure formation, for which an analytical solution is derived. The solution is well-behaved, showing that there is no physical instability with respect to these perturbations. The model can yield a growth of structure exhibiting measurable differences from $Λ$CDM.
Bimetric gravity is a ghost-free and observationally viable extension of general relativity, exhibiting both a massless and a massive graviton. The observed abundances of light elements can be used to constrain the expansion history of the Universe at the period of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Applied to bimetric gravity, we readily obtain constraints on the theory parameters which are complementary to other observational probes. For example, the mixing angle between the two gravitons must satisfy $θ\lesssim 18^\circ$ in the graviton mass range $m_\mathrm{FP} \gtrsim 10^{-16} \, \mathrm{eV}/c^2$,…
Ghost-free bimetric gravity is a theory of two interacting spin-2 fields, one massless and one massive, in addition to the standard matter particles and fields, thereby generalizing Einstein's theory of general relativity. To parameterize the theory, we use five observables with specific physical interpretations. We present, for the first time, observational constraints on these parameters that: (i) apply to the full theory, (ii) are consistent with a working screening mechanism (i.e., restoring general relativity locally), (iii) exhibit a continuous, real-valued background cosmology (without …
We provide a novel model of gravity by using adjoint frame fields in four dimensions. It has a natural interpretation as a gravitational theory of a complex metric field, which describes interactions between two real metrics. The classical solutions establish three appealing features. The spherical symmetric black hole solution has an additional hair, which includes the Schwarzschild solution as a special case. The de Sitter solution is realized without introducing a cosmological constant. The constant flat background breaks the Lorentz invariance spontaneously, although the Lorentz breaking e…
This article extends bimetric formulations of massive gravity to make the mass of the graviton to depend on its environment. This minimal extension offers a novel way to reconcile massive gravity with local tests of general relativity without invoking the Vainshtein mechanism. On cosmological scales, it is argued that the model is stable and that it circumvents the Higuchi bound, hence relaxing the constraints on the parameter space. Moreover, with this extension the strong coupling scale is also environmentally dependent in such a way that it is kept sufficiently higher than the expansion rat…
We analyse cosmological perturbations around a homogeneous and isotropic background for scalar-tensor, vector-tensor and bimetric theories of gravity. Building on previous results, we propose a unified view of the effective parameters of all these theories. Based on this structure, we explore the viable space of parameters for each family of models by imposing the absence of ghosts and gradient instabilities. We then focus on the quasistatic regime and confirm that all these theories can be approximated by the phenomenological two-parameter model described by an effective Newton's constant and…
Observational evidence for the existence of Dark Matter is limited to its gravitational effects. The extensive program for dedicated searches has yielded null results so far, challenging the most popular models. Here we propose that this is the case because the very existence of cold Dark Matter is a manifestation of gravity itself. The consistent bimetric theory of gravity, the only known ghost-free extension of General Relativity involving a massless and a massive spin-2 field, automatically contains a perfect Dark Matter candidate. We demonstrate that the massive spin-2 particle can be heav…
The detection of an electromagnetic counterpart (GRB 170817A) to the gravitational wave signal (GW170817) from the merger of two neutron stars opens a completely new arena for testing theories of gravity. We show that this measurement allows us to place stringent constraints on general scalar-tensor and vector-tensor theories, while allowing us to place an independent bound on the graviton mass in bimetric theories of gravity. These constraints severely reduce the viable range of cosmological models that have been proposed as alternatives to general relativistic cosmology.
In this paper we consider a specific type of the bimetric theory of gravitation with the two different metrics introduced in the cosmological frame. Both metrics respect all the symmetries of the standard FLRW solution and contain conformally related spatial parts. One of the metric is assumed to describe the causal structure for the matter. Another metric defines the causal structure for the gravitational interactions. A crucial point is that the spatial part of the metric describing gravity is given by the spatial part of the matter metric confromally rescaled by a time-dependent factor $α$ …
The light neutrino masses are at present most stringently constraint via cosmological probes. In particular the Planck collaboration reports $ \sum m_ν\leq 0.12\,\mathrm{eV}$ at $95\%$ CL within the standard cosmological model. This is more than one order of magnitude stronger than the one arising from laboratory searches. The cosmological bound taken at face value excludes a plethora of neutrino flavour models which can successfully explain the neutrino oscillation data. The indirect nature of the cosmological bound, however, allows to relax the bound to up to $ \sum m_ν\sim 1\,\mathrm{eV}$ i…
The recent detection of GRB 170817A and GW170817 constrains the speed of gravity waves $c_T$ to be that of light, which severely restricts the landscape of modified gravity theories that impact the cosmological evolution of the universe. In this work, we investigate the presence of black hole hair in the remaining viable cosmological theories of modified gravity that respect the constraint $c_T=1$. We focus mainly on scalar-tensor theories of gravity, analyzing static, asymptotically flat black holes in Horndeski, Beyond Horndeski, Einstein-Scalar-Gauss-Bonnet, and Chern-Simons theories. We fi…
Many extensions of the Standard Model predict large numbers of additional unstable particles whose decays in the early universe are tightly constrained by observational data. For example, the decays of such particles can alter the ratios of light-element abundances, give rise to distortions in the cosmic microwave background, alter the ionization history of the universe, and contribute to the diffuse photon flux. Constraints on new physics from such considerations are typically derived for a single unstable particle species with a single well-defined mass and characteristic lifetime. In this p…
We consider a cosmology with decaying metastable dark energy and assume that a decay process of this metastable dark energy is a quantum decay process. Such an assumption implies among others that the evolution of the Universe is irreversible and violates the time reversal symmetry. We show that if to replace the cosmological time $t$ appearing in the equation describing the evolution of the Universe by the Hubble cosmological scale time, then we obtain time dependent $Λ(t)$ in the form of the series of even powers of the Hubble parameter $H$: $Λ(t) = Λ(H)$. Out special attention is focused on…
We show that the coherent oscillations of a spin-2 field from bimetric theory can easily account for the observed dark matter abundance. We obtain the equation of motion for the field in a cosmological setting and discuss in detail the phenomenology of the model. The framework is testable in precision measurements of oscillating electric charge in atomic clocks, using atomic spectroscopy and in dedicated resonant mass detectors as well as in axion-like-particles experiments, which therefore provide a new window to probe and test gravity itself. We also comment on possible multimetric extension…
In the context of massive (bi-)gravity non-minimal matter couplings have been proposed. These couplings are special in the sense that they are free of the Boulware-Deser ghost below the strong coupling scale and can be used consistently as an effective field theory. Furthermore, they enrich the phenomenology of massive gravity. We consider these couplings in the framework of bimetric gravity and study the cosmological implications for background and linear tensor, vector, and scalar perturbations. Previous works have investigated special branch of solutions. Here we perform a complete perturba…
At present, cosmological observations set the most stringent bound on the neutrino mass scale. Within the standard cosmological model ($Λ$CDM), the Planck collaboration reports $\sum m_ν< 0.12\,\text{eV}$ at 95% CL. This bound, taken at face value, excludes many neutrino mass models. However, unstable neutrinos, with lifetimes shorter than the age of the universe $τ_ν\lesssim t_U$, represent a particle physics avenue to relax this constraint. Motivated by this fact, we present a taxonomy of neutrino decay modes, categorizing them in terms of particle content and final decay products. Taking in…
We perform the study of the stability of the cosmological scalar field models, by using the Jacobi stability analysis, or the Kosambi-Cartan-Chern (KCC) theory. In the KCC approach we describe the time evolution of the scalar field cosmologies in geometric terms, by performing a "second geometrization", by considering them as paths of a semispray. By introducing a non-linear connection and a Berwald type connection associated to the Friedmann and Klein-Gordon equations, five geometrical invariants can be constructed, with the second invariant giving the Jacobi stability of the cosmological mod…
