International Journal of Modern Physics D

We consider scalar field theories invariant under extended shift symmetries consisting of higher order polynomials in the spacetime coordinates. These generalize ordinary shift symmetries and the linear shift symmetries of the galileons. We find Wess–Zumino Lagrangians which transform up to total derivatives under these symmetries, and which possess fewer derivatives per field and lower order equations of motion than the strictly invariant terms. In the nonrelativistic context, where the extended shifts are purely spatial, these theories may describe multi-critical Goldstone bosons. In the relativistic case, where the shifts involve the full spacetime coordinate, these theories generally propagate extra ghostly degrees of freedom.

Ghost-free bimetric theory can describe gravity in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. In this paper, we study certain aspects of dynamics in this theory: (i) It is shown that if either of the metrics is an Einstein solution, then the other is always forced to be Einstein, too. For a class of bimetric models, this constraint is stronger and as soon as one metric is Einstein, the other metric is forced to be proportional to it. As a consequence, the models in this class avoid a branch of pathological solutions that exhibit determinant singularities or nonlinear ghosts. These constraints persists in a generalized form when sources are included, but are destroyed in the massive gravity limit of the theory. (ii) For another class of bimetric models, we show the existence of solutions that do not admit a massive gravity limit. A bimetric model that could exhibit a nonlinear version of "partially massless" symmetry belongs to both these classes. It is argued that if such a model exist, its symmetry will not survive in the massive gravity limit.

In this paper, we discuss the ghost freeness in the case when we add matter coupled to two metrics to the ghost-free bigravity. In this paper we show that the Boulware–Deser ghost generally revives in the presence of doubly coupled matter and that ghost freeness strongly restricts the model of kinetically doubly coupled matter. This result may anticipate difficulties in the attempt to derive the ghost-free bigravity as a low-energy effective theory, starting with a model applicable at high energies.

In this paper, we first show that the definition of the universal horizons studied recently in the khronometric theory of gravity can be straightforwardly generalized to other theories that violate the Lorentz symmetry, by simply considering the khronon as a probe field and playing the same role as a Killing vector field. As an application, we study static charged (D + 1)-dimensional spacetimes in the framework of the healthy (nonprojectable) Horava–Lifshitz (HL) gravity in the infrared (IR) limit, and find various solutions. Some of them represent Lifshitz spacetimes with hyperscaling violations, and some have black hole structures. In the latter, universal horizons always exist inside the Killing horizons. The surface gravity on them can be either larger or smaller than the surface gravity on the Killing horizons, depending on the spacetimes considered. Although such black holes are found only in the IR, we argue that black holes with universal horizons also exist in the full theory of the HL gravity. A simple example is the Schwarzschild solution written in the Painleve–Gullstrand coordinates, which is also a solution of the full theory of the HL gravity and has a universal horizon located inside the Schwarzschild Killing horizon.

Universal horizons in Hořava–Lifshitz gravity and Einstein-æther theory are the equivalent of causal horizons in general relativity and appear to have many of the same properties, including a first law of horizon thermodynamics and thermal radiation. Since universal horizons are infrared (IR) solutions of a putative power counting renormalizable quantum gravitational theory, fully understanding their thermodynamics will shed light on the interplay between black hole thermodynamics and quantum gravity. In this paper, we provide a complete classification, including asymptotic charges, of all four-dimensional static and spherically symmetric universal horizon solutions with maximally symmetric asymptotics — the equivalents of the Schwarzschild, Schwarzschild–de Sitter or Schwarzschild–anti-de Sitter spacetimes. Additionally, we derive the associated first laws for the universal horizon solutions. Finally, we prove that independent of asymptotic boundary conditions, any spherically symmetric solution in Hořava–Lifshitz gravity with a universal horizon is also a solution of Einstein-æther theory, thereby broadening and complementing the known equivalence region of the solution spaces.

We present exact Friedmann Lemaítre Robertson Walkers (FLRW) solutions in generalized massive gravity where the mass parameters are naturally promoted to Lorentz-invariant functions of the Stückelberg fields. This new dependence relaxes the constraint that would otherwise prevent massive gravity from possessing exact FLRW solutions. It does so without the need to introduce additional degrees of freedom. We find self-accelerating cosmological solutions and show that, with a mild restriction on the region of phase space, these cosmological solutions exhibit full stability, i.e. absence of ghosts and gradient instabilities for all the tensor, vector and scalar modes, for all cosmic time. We perform the full decoupling limit analysis, including vector degrees of freedom, which can be used to confirm the existence of an active Vainshtein mechanism about these solutions.

We propose a novel solution for the endpoint of gravitational collapse, in which spacetime ends (and is orbifolded) at a microscopic distance from black hole event horizons. This model is motivated by the emergence of singular event horizons in the gravitational aether theory, a semiclassical solution to the cosmological constant problem(s) and thus suggests a catastrophic breakdown of general relativity close to black hole event horizons. A similar picture emerges in fuzzball models of black holes in string theory, as well as the recent firewall proposal to resolve the information paradox. We then demonstrate that positing a surface fluid in thermal equilibrium with Hawking radiation, with vanishing energy density (but nonvanishing pressure) at the new boundary of spacetime, which is required by Israel junction conditions, yields a thermodynamic entropy that is identical to the Bekenstein–Hawking area law, S_BH, for charged rotating black holes. To our knowledge, this is the first derivation of black hole entropy that only employs local thermodynamics. Furthermore, a model for the microscopic degrees of freedom of the surface fluid (which constitute the microstates of the black hole) is suggested, which has a finite, but Lorentz-violating, quantum field theory. Finally, we comment on the effects of physical boundary on Hawking radiation and show that relaxing the assumption of equilibrium with Hawking radiation sets S_BH as an upper limit for Black Hole entropy.

In this paper, we review the effective field theory of modified gravity in which the Lagrangian involves three-dimensional geometric quantities appearing in the 3+1 decomposition of spacetime. On the flat isotropic cosmological background, we expand a general action up to second-order in the perturbations of geometric scalars, by taking into account spatial derivatives higher than two. Our analysis covers a wide range of gravitational theories — including Horndeski theory/its recent generalizations and the projectable/nonprojectable versions of Hořava–Lifshitz gravity. We derive the equations of motion for linear cosmological perturbations and apply them to the calculations of inflationary power spectra as well as the dark energy dynamics in Galileon theories. We also show that our general results conveniently recover stability conditions of Hořava–Lifshitz gravity already derived in the literature.

Theories of gravitation without Lorentz invariance are candidates of low-energy descriptions of quantum gravity. In this paper, we will describe the phenomenological consequences of the candidates associated to the existence of a preferred time direction.

We review and extend a novel approach that we recently introduced, to describe general dark energy or scalar-tensor models. Our approach relies on an Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) formulation based on the hypersurfaces where the underlying scalar field is uniform. The advantage of this approach is that it can describe in the same language and in a minimal way a vast number of existing models, such as quintessence, F(R) theories, scalar tensor theories, their Horndeski extensions and beyond. It also naturally includes Horava–Lifshitz theories. As summarized in this review, our approach provides a unified treatment of the linear cosmological perturbations about a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universe, obtained by a systematic expansion of our general action up to quadratic order. This shows that the behavior of these linear perturbations is generically characterized by five time-dependent functions. We derive the full equations of motion in the Newtonian gauge. In the Horndeski case, we obtain the equation of state for dark energy perturbations in terms of these functions. Our unifying description thus provides the simplest and most systematic way to confront theoretical models with current and future cosmological observations.