I describe how vacuum energy can be controlled by a symmetry principle that necessitates a ghost sector. I argue that the implied instability of Minkowski spacetime is natural and consistent with experience if gravity is fundamentally Lorentz-violating, and describe attempts to construct such exotic dynamics. I briefly discuss the more robust experimental/observational signatures of such a scenario.
Motivated by the severity of the bounds on Lorentz violation in the presence of ordinary gravity, we study frameworks in which Lorentz violation does not affect the spacetime geometry. We show that there are at least two inequivalent classes of spontaneous Lorentz breaking that even in the presence of gravity result in Minkowski space. The first one generically corresponds to the condensation of tensor fields with tachyonic mass, which in turn is related to ghost-condensation. In the second class, realized in the DGP model or in theories of massive gravity, spontaneous Lorentz breaking is induced by the expectation value of sources. The generalization to de-Sitter space is also discussed.
In this talk, I summarize a current status of the DGP braneworld emphasizing the theoretical consistency of the model.First I review the behaviour of the linearized gravity and show the existence of the ghost. Then I discuss the issue of the non-linearity of gravity in this model.
We present analytically solvable nonlinear models of structure formation in a Universe with only dust, using LTB solutions. We show that the luminosity distance-redshift relation has significant corrections at low redshift (Doppler effect). We discuss different possibilities that could further enhance this effect and mimick Dark Energy. We find negligible integrated effect, suppressed by $(L/R_{H})^3$ (where $L$ is the size of the structure, and $R_{H}$ is the Hubble radius) and we make contact with cosmological perturbation theory.
We consider the effect that dynamical selection principles could have on the string landscape and for determining the value of the cosmological constant. The underlying symmetries of string theory, along with the dynamics of moduli in the low energy effective field theory, seem to suggest that not all vacua are created equal. However, in some simple models many vacua are alike and this degeneracy may suggest a *non-anthropic* approach to understanding the observed value of the cosmological constant. The approach may also lead to a viable model of inflation, without the need of fine-tuned potentials.
Brane worlds may provide insight into the cosmological constant problem because a large vacuum energy on the brane can curve the extra dimensions rather than the local 4D spacetime. Moreover, such models with supersymmetric large extra dimensions reveal a tantalizing numerology, in which the size of the two extra dimensions can lead not only to the electroweak hierarchy but also to the observed dark energy scale. I will review this proposal, its promises and problems, and then describe some of the novel physics that can arise in 6D brane worlds. The dynamical stability of models in 6D supergravity constrains the matter content of the theory, but surprisingly this can be relaxed with negative tension branes. Meanwhile, the Kaluza-Klein mass gap can remain finite even in the infinite volume limit.
One of the possible explanations for the current acceleration of the universe comes from a coupling between the Dark Energy and the Neutrino sectors. This coupling causes the neutrino mass to vary with cosmic time, what opens a new window to constrain this dark energy candidate. In this work, we analyze the mass-varying neutrino scenario in a model independent way, focusing on its effects for the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure.
A modification of Gravity in the low-curvature regime may account for the late time acceleration of our universe, and is therefore an interesting alternative to Dark Energy.In such models, the modified Einstein equations admit self-accelerated solutions in the presence of negligible matter. At the level of perturbation theory,the modified equations give rise to new dynamics for the perturbations of the metric and matter. I will consider scalar perturbations, presenting in some details the dynamics of linear perturbations for two specific models, f(R) Gravity and Modified Source Gravity. I will conclude by demonstrating how some characteristic features of these models are likely to be common to general models of Modified Gravity and how Large Scale Structure formation and the Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect might be useful probes to distinguish between Dark Energy and Modified Gravity.