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Izadi, A., Shacker, S. S., Olmo, G. J., & Banerjee, R. (2018). Observational effects of varying speed of light in quadratic gravity cosmological models. Int. J. Geom. Methods Mod. Phys., 15(5), 1850084–16pp.
Abstract: We study different manifestations of the speed of light in theories of gravity where metric and connection are regarded as independent fields. We find that for a generic gravity theory in a frame with locally vanishing affine connection, the usual degeneracy between different manifestations of the speed of light is broken. In particular, the space-time causal structure constant (c(ST)) may become variable in that local frame. For theories of the form f(R, R-mu nu R-mu nu), this variation in c(ST) has an impact on the definition of the luminosity distance (and distance modulus), which can be used to confront the predictions of particular models against Supernovae type Ia (SN Ia) data. We carry out this test for a quadratic gravity model without cosmological constant assuming (i) a constant speed of light and (ii) a varying speed of light (VSL), and find that the latter scenario is favored by the data.
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Olmo, G. J. (2011). Palatini approach to modified gravity: f(R) theories and beyond. Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, 20(4), 413–462.
Abstract: We review the recent literature on modified theories of gravity in the Palatini approach. After discussing the motivations that lead to consider alternatives to Einstein's theory and to treat the metric and the connection as independent objects, we review several topics that have been recently studied within this framework. In particular, we provide an in-depth analysis of the cosmic speed-up problem, laboratory and solar system tests, the structure of stellar objects, the Cauchy problem, and bouncing cosmologies. We also discuss the importance of going beyond the f(R) models to capture other phenomenological aspects related with dark matter/energy and quantum gravity.
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Capozziello, S., Harko, T., Lobo, F. S. N., & Olmo, G. J. (2013). Hybrid Modified Gravity Unifying Local Tests, Galactic Dynamics and Late-Time Cosmic Acceleration. Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, 22(12), 1342006–7pp.
Abstract: The nonequivalence between the metric and Palatini formalisms of f(R) gravity is an intriguing feature of these theories. However, in the recently proposed hybrid metric-Palatini gravity, consisting of the superposition of the metric Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian with an f(R) term constructed a la Palatini, the “true” gravitational field is described by the interpolation of these two nonequivalent approaches. The theory predicts the existence of a light long-range scalar field, which passes the local constraints and affects the galactic and cosmological dynamics. Thus, the theory opens new possibilities for a unified approach, in the same theoretical framework, to the problems of dark energy and dark matter, without distinguishing a priori matter and geometric sources, but taking their dynamics into account under the same standard.
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Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2015). The quantum, the geon and the crystal. Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, 24(9), 1542013–15pp.
Abstract: Effective geometries arising from a hypothetical discrete structure of spacetime can play an important role in the understanding of the gravitational physics beyond General Relativity (GR). To discuss this question, we make use of lessons from crystalline systems within solid state physics, where the presence of defects in the discrete microstructure of the crystal determine the kind of effective geometry needed to properly describe the system in the macroscopic continuum limit. In this work, we study metric-affine theories with nonmetricity and torsion, which are the gravitational analog of crystalline structures with point defects and dislocations. We consider a crystal-motivated gravitational action and show the presence of topologically nontrivial structures (wormholes) supported by an electromagnetic field. Their existence has important implications for the quantum foam picture and the effective gravitational geometries. We discuss how the dialogue between solid state physics systems and modified gravitational theories can provide useful insights on both sides.
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Alfonso, V. I., Bejarano, C., Beltran Jimenez, J., Olmo, G. J., & Orazi, E. (2017). The trivial role of torsion in projective invariant theories of gravity with non-minimally coupled matter fields. Class. Quantum Gravity, 34(23), 235003–20pp.
Abstract: We study a large family of metric-affine theories with a projective symmetry, including non-minimally coupled matter fields which respect this invariance. The symmetry is straightforwardly realised by imposing that the connection only enters through the symmetric part of the Ricci tensor, even in the matter sector. We leave the connection completely free (including torsion), and obtain its general solution as the Levi-Civita connection of an auxiliary metric, showing that the torsion only appears as a projective mode. This result justifies the widely used condition of setting vanishing torsion in these theories as a simple gauge choice. We apply our results to some particular cases considered in the literature, including the so-called Eddington-inspired-Born-Infeld theories among others. We finally discuss the possibility of imposing a gauge fixing where the connection is metric compatible, and comment on the genuine character of the non-metricity in theories where the two metrics are not conformally related.
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Maso-Ferrando, A., Sanchis-Gual, N., Font, J. A., & Olmo, G. J. (2021). Boson stars in Palatini f(R) gravity. Class. Quantum Gravity, 38(19), 194003–25pp.
Abstract: We explore equilibrium solutions of spherically symmetric boson stars in the Palatini formulation of f (R) gravity. We account for the modifications introduced in the gravitational sector by using a recently established correspondence between modified gravity with scalar matter and general relativity with modified scalar matter. We focus on the quadratic theory f (R) = R + xi R-2 and compare its solutions with those found in general relativity, exploring both positive and negative values of the coupling parameter xi. As matter source, a complex, massive scalar field with and without self-interaction terms is considered. Our results show that the existence curves of boson stars in Palatini f (R) gravity are fairly similar to those found in general relativity. Major differences are observed for negative values of the coupling parameter which results in a repulsive gravitational component for high enough scalar field density distributions. Adding self-interactions makes the degeneracy between f (R) and general relativity even more pronounced, leaving very little room for observational discrimination between the two theories.
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Capozziello, S., Harko, T., Koivisto, T. S., Lobo, F. S. N., & Olmo, G. J. (2013). Galactic rotation curves in hybrid metric-Palatini gravity. Astropart Phys., 50-52, 65–75.
Abstract: Generally, the dynamics of test particles around galaxies, as well as the corresponding mass deficit, is explained by postulating the existence of a hypothetical dark matter. In fact, the behavior of the rotation curves shows the existence of a constant velocity region, near the baryonic matter distribution, followed by a quick decay at large distances. In this work, we consider the possibility that the behavior of the rotational velocities of test particles gravitating around galaxies can be explained within the framework of the recently proposed hybrid metric-Palatini gravitational theory. The latter is constructed by modifying the metric Einstein-Hilbert action with an f(R) term in the Palatini formalism. It was shown that the theory unifies local constraints and the late-time cosmic acceleration, even if the scalar field is very light. In the intermediate galactic scale, we show explicitly that in the hybrid metric-Palatini model the tangential velocity can be explicitly obtained as a function of the scalar field of the equivalent scalar-tensor description. The model predictions are compared model with a small sample of rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies, respectively, and a good agreement between the theoretical rotation Curves and the observational data is found. The possibility of constraining the form of the scalar field and the parameters of the model by using the stellar velocity dispersions is also analyzed. Furthermore, the Doppler velocity shifts are also obtained in terms of the scalar field. All the physical and geometrical quantities and the numerical parameters in the hybrid metric-Palatini model can be expressed in terms of observable/measurable parameters, such as the tangential velocity, the baryonic mass of the galaxy, the Doppler frequency shifts, and the stellar dispersion velocity, respectively. Therefore, the obtained results open the possibility of testing the hybrid metric-Palatini gravitational models at the galactic or extra-galactic scale by using direct astronomical and astrophysical observations.
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Guendelman, E. I., Olmo, G. J., Rubiera-Garcia, D., & Vasihoun, M. (2013). Nonsingular electrovacuum solutions with dynamically generated cosmological constant. Phys. Lett. B, 726(4-5), 870–875.
Abstract: We consider static spherically symmetric configurations in a Palatini extension of General Relativity including R-2 and Ricci-squared terms, which is known to replace the central singularity by a wormhole in the electrovacuum case. We modify the matter sector of the theory by adding to the usual Maxwell term a nonlinear electromagnetic extension which is known to implement a confinement mechanism in flat space. One feature of the resulting theory is that the nonlinear electric field leads to a dynamically generated cosmological constant. We show that with this matter source the solutions of the model are asymptotically de Sitter and possess a wormhole topology. We discuss in some detail the conditions that guarantee the absence of singularities and of traversable wormholes.
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Lobo, F. S. N., Martinez-Asencio, J., Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2014). Planck scale physics and topology change through an exactly solvable model. Phys. Lett. B, 731, 163–167.
Abstract: We consider the collapse of a charged radiation fluid in a Planck-suppressed quadratic extension of General Relativity (GR) formulated A la Palatini. We obtain exact analytical solutions that extend the charged Vaidya-type solution of GR, which allows to explore in detail new physics at the Planck scale. Starting from Minkowski space, we find that the collapsing fluid generates wormholes supported by the electric field. We discuss the relevance of our findings in relation to the quantum foam structure of space-time and the meaning of curvature divergences in this theory.
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Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2015). Brane-world and loop cosmology from a gravity-matter coupling perspective. Phys. Lett. B, 740, 73–79.
Abstract: We show that the effective brane-world and the loop quantum cosmology background expansion histories can be reproduced from a modified gravity perspective in terms of an f (R) gravity action plus a g(R) term non-minimally coupled with the matter Lagrangian. The reconstruction algorithm that we provide depends on a free function of the matter density that must be specified in each case and allows to obtain analytical solutions always. In the simplest cases, the function f (R) is quadratic in the Ricci scalar, R, whereas g(R) is linear. Our approach is compared with recent results in the literature. We show that working in the Palatini formalism there is no need to impose any constraint that keeps the equations second order, which is a key requirement for the successful implementation of the reconstruction algorithm.
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