Academic literature on the topic 'Extended theories of gravity'

We shall show equivalence between Palatini-f(ℛ) theories and Brans–Dicke (BD) theories at the level of action principles in generic dimension with generic matter coupling. We do that by introducing the Helmholtz Lagrangian associated to Palatini-f(ℛ) theory and then performing frame transformations in order to recover Einstein frame and BD frame. This clarifies the relation among different formulations and the transformations among different frames. Additionally, it defines a formulation a lá Palatini for the BD theory which is dynamically equivalent to metric BD (unlike the standard Palatini-formulation of metric BD theory which are not dynamically equivalent). In conclusion, we discuss interpretation of extended theories of gravitation and perspectives.

Causality is one of the most important properties to understand gravity theories. It gives us not only a method to confirm that the gravity theories are really consistent, but also gives implications about the properties which unknown fundamental physics should obey. We investigate the causality of three-dimensional (3D) gravity theories, which are considered to be important, by using the Shapiro time delay effect in the Shock wave geometry. One of such gravity theories is the Zwei-Dreibein Gravity (ZDG) theory, which is a consistent 3D gravity theory. In ZDG theory, the serious problems can be removed that have appeared in another important gravity theory called New Massive Gravity (NMG). We study whether the ZDG theory could preserve the causality without losing the above good properties and how the causality structure is related to the structure of the NMG theory.

Cosmography can be considered as a sort of a model-independent approach to tackle the dark energy/modified gravity problem. In this review, the success and the shortcomings of the [Formula: see text]CDM model, based on General Relativity (GR) and standard model of particles, are discussed in view of the most recent observational constraints. The motivations for considering extensions and modifications of GR are taken into account, with particular attention to [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] theories of gravity where dynamics is represented by curvature or torsion field, respectively. The features of [Formula: see text] models are explored in metric and Palatini formalisms. We discuss the connection between [Formula: see text] gravity and scalar–tensor theories highlighting the role of conformal transformations in the Einstein and Jordan frames. Cosmological dynamics of [Formula: see text] models is investigated through the corresponding viability criteria. Afterwards, the equivalent formulation of GR (Teleparallel Equivalent General Relativity (TEGR)) in terms of torsion and its extension to [Formula: see text] gravity is considered. Finally, the cosmographic method is adopted to break the degeneracy among dark energy models. A novel approach, built upon rational Padé and Chebyshev polynomials, is proposed to overcome limits of standard cosmography based on Taylor expansion. The approach provides accurate model-independent approximations of the Hubble flow. Numerical analyses, based on Monte Carlo Markov Chain integration of cosmic data, are presented to bound coefficients of the cosmographic series. These techniques are thus applied to reconstruct [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] functions and to frame the late-time expansion history of the universe with no a priori assumptions on its equation-of-state. A comparison between the [Formula: see text]CDM cosmological model with [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] models is reported.