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Ghosts, instabilities, and superluminal propagation in modified gravity models

Antonio De Felice1, Mark Hindmarsh1 and Mark Trodden2

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We consider modified gravity models involving inverse powers of fourth order curvature invariants. Using these models' equivalence to the theory of a scalar field coupled to a linear combination of the invariants, we investigate the properties of the propagating modes. Even in the case for which the fourth derivative terms in the field equations vanish, we find that the second derivative terms can give rise to ghosts, instabilities, and superluminal propagation speeds. We establish the conditions which the theories must satisfy in order to avoid these problems in Friedmann backgrounds, and show that the late time attractor solutions generically exhibit superluminally propagating tensor or scalar modes.


Keywords

cosmological perturbation theory

gravity

dark energy theory

 

E-print Number: astro-ph/0604154

Cited: by |

Refers: to

PACS

98.80.Cq Particle-theory and field-theory models of the early Universe (including cosmic pancakes, cosmic strings, chaotic phenomena, inflationary universe, etc.)

98.80.Es Observational cosmology (including Hubble constant, distance scale, cosmological constant, early Universe, etc)

04.20.-q Classical general relativity

Subjects

Gravitation and cosmology

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 08 (August 2006)

Received 3 May 2006, accepted for publication 21 July 2006

Published 16 August 2006



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