We consider the kinematical and dynamical evolution of Friedmann universes with a mixture of non-interacting matter and a ghost-like field, in a scenario analogous to that advocated by the Quintom model. Assuming that the conventional matter dominates today, we find that the ghost component can bring the future expansion and the past contraction of the model to a finite halt. Moreover, at the moment the expansion or contraction stops, we find that the tendency of the universe is to bounce back and re-collapse or re-expand. Therefore, the presence of a (never dominant) ghost-field with negative density could, in principle, drive the universe into an eternal cycle of finite expansion, collapse, and re-expansion. Our study outlines the key features of such a scenario and provides a simple condition for it to occur. We also derive an autonomous set of differential equations and then employ dynamical-system techniques to identify two families of fixed points, with and without spatial curvature respectively. The members of the first family correspond to coasting universes and are stable in the Lyapunov sense. Those of the latter family are unstable repellers when their matter satisfies the strong energy condition and Lyapunov stable in the opposite case.
We consider the classical linear stability of a static universe filled with a non-interacting mixture of isotropic radiation and a ghost scalar field. Unlike the conventional Einstein static model, this cosmology is stable against homogeneous and isotropic perturbations. This is shown by means of exact oscillatory solutions about the original static state. We also examine the linear response of the static ghost universe to all types of inhomogeneous fluctuations, namely density, vorticity and gravitational-wave perturbations. The results show that the static background constrains the linear ev…
Within the theory of the ghost-free bigravity, we present the most general cosmological solution for which the physical metric is homogeneous and isotropic, while the second metric is inhomogeneous. The solution includes a matter source and exists for any values of the theory parameters. The physical metric describes a universe with the late time acceleration due to the effective cosmological term mimicked by the graviton mass. When perturbed, this universe should rest approximately homogeneous and isotropic in space regions small compared to the graviton Compton length. In the limit where the…
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 dominate…
We review a dynamical dark energy model scarcely studied in the literature and we introduce two possible generalizations. We discuss separately the behavior of the original model and a minimal extension of it by exploring some early and late times limits, we find that the cosmic components are related by their parameters state. In order to have access to the phantom regime we present two dark energy densities inspired from the holographic approach and from the emergent entropic forces model in the early universe. For the first case we obtain a Type III singularity and in the second proposal we…
We present the detailed derivation of the recently announced most general cosmological solution with homogeneous and isotropic metric in the ghost-free massive gravity theory. We use the standard parametrization of the theory in terms of the matrix square root, and then show how the same results are recovered within the tetrad formulation. The solution obtained includes the matter source, it exists for generic values of the theory parameters, and it describes a universe that can be spatially open, closed, or flat, and that shows the late time acceleration due to the effective cosmological term…
We investigate the stability against inhomogeneous perturbations and the appearance of ghost modes in Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theories with a non-minimally coupled scalar field, which can be regarded as either the dilaton or a compactification modulus in the context of string theory. Through cosmological linear perturbations we extract four no-ghost and two sub-luminal constraint equations, written in terms of background quantities, which must be satisfied for consistency. We also argue that, for a general action with quadratic Riemann invariants, homogeneous and inhomogeneous perturbations…
We present a survey of the known cosmological and black hole solutions in ghost-free bigravity and massive gravity theories. These can be divided into three classes. First, there are solutions with proportional metrics, which are the same as in General Relativity with a cosmological term, which can be positive, negative or zero. Secondly, for spherically symmetric systems, there are solutions with non-bidiagonal metrics. The g-metric fulfills Einstein equations with a positive cosmological term and a matter source, while the f-metric is anti-de Sitter. The third class contains solutions with b…
We present a systematic analysis of homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies in a particular Horndeski model with Galileon shift symmetry, containing also a $Λ$-term and a matter. The model, sometimes called Fab Five, admits a rich spectrum of solutions. Some of them describe the standard late time cosmological dynamic dominated by the $Λ$-term and matter, while at the early times the universe expands with a constant Hubble rate determined by the value of the scalar kinetic coupling. For other solutions the $Λ$-term and matter are screened at all times but there are nevertheless the early and lat…
In this contribution we summarize two recent applications of a correspondence between backreaction terms in averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies and an effective scalar field (the `morphon'). Backreaction terms that add to the standard sources of Friedmannian kinematical laws and that emerge from geometrical curvature invariants built from inhomogeneities, can be interpreted in terms of a minimally coupled scalar field in the case of a dust matter source. We consider closure conditions of the averaged equations that lead to different evolution scenarii: a) the standard Chaplygin equation of stat…
Spatially averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies in classical general relativity can be written in the form of effective Friedmann equations with sources that include backreaction terms. In this paper we propose to describe these backreaction terms with the help of a homogeneous scalar field evolving in a potential; we call it the `morphon field'. This new field links classical inhomogeneous cosmologies to scalar field cosmologies, allowing to reinterpret, e.g., quintessence scenarios by routing the physical origin of the scalar field source to inhomogeneities in the Universe. We investigate a one…
We revisit nonsingular cosmologies in which the limiting curvature hypothesis is realized. We study the cosmological perturbations of the theory and determine the general criteria for stability. For the simplest model, we find generic Ostrogradski instabilities unless the action contains the Weyl tensor squared with the appropriate coefficient. When considering two specific nonsingular cosmological scenarios(one inflationary and one genesis model), we find ghost and gradient instabilities throughout most of the cosmic evolution. Furthermore, we show that the theory is equivalent to a theory of…
We study a previously largely unexplored branch of homogeneous and isotropic background solutions in ghost-free massive bigravity with consistent double matter coupling. For a certain family of parameters we find `self-inflated' FLRW cosmologies, i.e. solutions with an accelerated early-time period during the radiation-dominated era. In addition, these solutions also display an accelerated late-time period closely mimicking GR with a cosmological constant. Interestingly, within this family, the particular case of $β_1=β_3=0$ gives bouncing cosmologies, where there is an infinite contracting pa…
We find all the perfect fluid G2 diagonal cosmologies with the property that the quotient of the norms of the two orthogonal Killing vectors is constant along each fluid world-line. We find four different families depending each one on two or three arbitrary parameters which satisfy that the metric coefficients are not separable functions. Some physical properties of these solutions including energy conditions, kinematical quantities, Petrov type, the existence and nature of the singularities and whether they contain Friedman-Robertson-Walker cosmologies as particular cases are also included.
For general relativistic spacetimes filled with an irrotational perfect fluid a generalized form of Friedmann's equations governing the expansion factor of spatially averaged portions of inhomogeneous cosmologies is derived. The averaging problem for scalar quantities is condensed into the problem of finding an `effective equation of state' including kinematical as well as dynamical `backreaction' terms that measure the departure from a standard FLRW cosmology. Applications of the averaged models are outlined including radiation-dominated and scalar field cosmologies (inflationary and dilaton/…
We study the apparition of event horizons in accelerated expanding cosmologies. We give a graphical and analytical representation of the horizons using proper distances to coordinate the events. Our analysis is mainly kinematical. We show that, independently of the dynamical equations, all the event horizons tend in the future infinity to a given expression depending on the scale factor that we call asymptotic horizon. We also encounter a subclass of accelerating models without horizon. When the ingoing null geodesics do not change concavity in its cosmic evolution we recover the de Sitter and…
We study Bianchi cosmologies in the ghost-free bigravity theory assuming both metrics to be homogeneous and anisotropic, of the Bianchi class A, which includes types I,II,VI$_0$,VII$_0$,VIII, and IX. We assume the universe to contain a radiation and a non-relativistic matter, with the cosmological term mimicked by the graviton mass. We find that, for generic initial values leading to a late-time self-acceleration, the universe approaches a state with non-vanishing anisotropies. The anisotropy contribution to the total energy density decreases much slower than in General Relativity and shows th…
We analyze the Extended Quasi-Dilaton Massive Gravity model around a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmological background. We present a careful stability analysis of asymptotic fixed points. We find that the traditional fixed point cannot be approached dynamically, except from a perfectly fine-tuned initial condition involving both the quasi-dilaton and the Hubble parameter. A less-well examined fixed-point solution, where the time derivative of the 0-th Stückelberg field vanishes $\dotϕ^0=0$, encounters no such difficulty, and the fixed point is an attractor in some finite region of in…
Various astronomical observations have been consistently making a strong case for the existence of a component of dark energy with negative pressure in the universe. It is now necessary to take the dark energy component(s) into account in gravitational lensing statistics and other cosmological tests. By using the comoving distance we derive analytic but simple expressions for the optical depth of multiple image, the expected value of image separation and the probability distribution of image separation caused by an assemble of singular isothermal spheres in general FRW cosmological models with…
Two families of exact simple solutions of Einstein field equations for inhomogeneous stiff cosmologies are presented. The method to obtain the solutions is based on the introduction of auxiliary functions in order to cast the Einstein equations in such a way that can be explicitly integrated. Now, despite of the equations are mathematically equivalent to the equations obtained when the source of matter is a scalar field, is worth to mention that the source that we consider is not a scalar field but a perfect fluid with the stiff equation of state. The obtained solutions are expressed in terms …
Explaining the effects of dark matter using modified gravitational dynamics (MOND) has for decades been both an intriguing and controversial possibility. By insisting that the gravitational interaction that accounts for the Newtonian force also drives cosmic expansion, one may kinematically identify which cosmologies are compatible with MOND, without explicit reference to the underlying theory so long as the theory obeys Birkhoff's law. Using this technique, we are able to self-consistently compute a number of quantities of cosmological interest. We find that the critical acceleration a_0 must…
We present a consistent effective theory that violates the null energy condition (NEC) without developing any instabilities or other pathological features. The model is the ghost condensate with the global shift symmetry softly broken by a potential. We show that this system can drive a cosmological expansion with dH/dt > 0. Demanding the absence of instabilities in this model requires dH/dt <~ H^2. We then construct a general low-energy effective theory that describes scalar fluctuations about an arbitrary FRW background, and argue that the qualitative features found in our model are very gen…
Until recently, the physically relevant singularities occurring in FRW cosmologies had traditionally been thought to be limited to the "big bang", and possibly a "big crunch". However, over the last few years, the zoo of cosmological singularities considered in the literature has become considerably more extensive, with "big rips" and "sudden singularities" added to the mix, as well as renewed interest in non-singular cosmological events such as "bounces" and "turnarounds". In this talk, we present an extensive catalogue of such cosmological milestones, both at the kinematical and dynamical le…
An integral kernel representation for the commutative $\star$-product on curved classical spacetime is introduced. Its convergence conditions and relationship to a Drin'feld differential twist are established. A $\star$-Einstein field equation can be obtained, provided the matter-based twist's vector generators are fixed to self-consistent values during the variation in order to maintain $\star$-associativity. Variations not of this type are non-viable as classical field theories. $\star$-Gauge theory on such a spacetime can be developed using $\star$-Ehresmann connections. While the theory pr…
We discuss the effect of curvature and matter inhomogeneities on the averaged scalar curvature of the present-day Universe. Motivated by studies of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies, we contemplate on the question whether it is sensible to assume that curvature averages out on some scale of homogeneity, as implied by the standard concordance model of cosmology, or whether the averaged scalar curvature can be largely negative today, as required for an explanation of Dark Energy from inhomogeneities. We confront both conjectures with a detailed analysis of the kinematical backreaction term and …
