Models of G time variations in diverse dimensions

A review of different cosmological models in diverse dimensions leading to a relatively small time variation in the effective gravitational constant G is presented. Among them: the 4-dimensional (4-D) general scalar-tensor model, the multidimensional vacuum model with two curved Einstein spaces, the multidimensional model with the multicomponent anisotropic “perfect fluid”, the S-brane model with scalar fields and two form fields, etc. It is shown that there exist different possible ways of explaining relatively small time variations of the effective gravitational constant G compatible with present cosmological data (e.g. acceleration): 4-dimensional scalar-tensor theories or multidimensional cosmological models with different matter sources. The experimental bounds on Ġ may be satisfied either in some restricted interval or for all allowed values of the synchronous time variable.      

Cosmological compactification in Kaluza-Klein model and time-dependent cosmological term

Einstein's equations for the generalized (4+D)-dimensional Robertson-Walker model are solved taking the conformally invariant action for the matter field. Compactification of this model is discussed and the compactification time/compactification mass scale for different values ofD is calculated. The resulting 4-dimensional action for gravity is obtained. It is found that a time-dependent cosmological constant is induced which is very large when the cosmic time is small and very small when the cosmic time is large.     

Buchdahl limit for <Emphasis Type="Italic">d</Emphasis>-dimensional spherical solutions with a cosmological constant

We investigate the conditions for which a d-dimensional perfect fluid solution is in hydrostatic equilibrium with a cosmological constant. We find a generalization of Buchdahl inequality and obtain an upper bound for the degree of compactification. Using the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff equation to get a lower bound for the degree of compactification we analyse the regions where the solution is in hydrostatic equilibrium. We obtain the inner metric solution and the pressure for the constant fluid density model.     

Dark energy and gravity

I review the problem of dark energy focussing on cosmological constant as the candidate and discuss what it tells us regarding the nature of gravity. Section 1 briefly overviews the currently popular “concordance cosmology” and summarizes the evidence for dark energy. It also provides the observational and theoretical arguments in favour of the cosmological constant as a candidate and emphasizes why no other approach really solves the conceptual problems usually attributed to cosmological constant. Section 2 describes some of the approaches to understand the nature of the cosmological constant and attempts to extract certain key ingredients which must be present in any viable solution. In the conventional approach, the equations of motion for matter fields are invariant under the shift of the matter Lagrangian by a constant while gravity breaks this symmetry. I argue that until the gravity is made to respect this symmetry, one cannot obtain a satisfactory solution to the cosmological constant problem. Hence cosmological constant problem essentially has to do with our understanding of the nature of gravity. Section 3 discusses such an alternative perspective on gravity in which the gravitational interaction—described in terms of a metric on a smooth spacetime—is an emergent, long wavelength phenomenon, and can be described in terms of an effective theory using an action associated with normalized vectors in the spacetime. This action is explicitly invariant under the shift of the matter energy momentum tensor T _ab → T _ab + Λ _gab and any bulk cosmological constant can be gauged away. Extremizing this action leads to an equation determining the background geometry which gives Einstein’s theory at the lowest order with Lanczos–Lovelock type corrections. In this approach, the observed value of the cosmological constant has to arise from the energy fluctuations of degrees of freedom located in the boundary of a spacetime region.     

Electromagnetic quasinormal modes of D-dimensional black holes II

By using the sixth order WKB approximation we calculate for an electromagnetic field propagating in D-dimensional Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild de Sitter (SdS) black holes its quasinormal (QN) frequencies for the fundamental mode and first overtones. We study the dependence of these QN frequencies on the value of the cosmological constant and the spacetime dimension. We also compare with the results for the gravitational perturbations propagating in the same background. Moreover we compute exactly the QN frequencies of the electromagnetic field propagating in D-dimensional massless topological black hole and for the charged D-dimensional Nariai spacetime we calculate exactly the QN frequencies of the coupled electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations.     

Route to Lambda in conformally coupled phantom cosmology

In this Letter we investigate acceleration in the flat cosmological model with a conformally coupled phantom field and we show that acceleration is its generic feature. We reduce the dynamics of the model to a 3-dimensional dynamical system and analyze it on a invariant 2-dimensional submanifold. Then the concordance FRW model with the cosmological constant Λ   is a global attractor situated on a 2-dimensional invariant space. We also study the behaviour near this attractor, which can be approximated by the dynamics of the linearized part of the system. We demonstrate that trajectories of the conformally coupled phantom scalar field with a simple quadratic potential crosses the cosmological constant barrier infinitely many times in the phase space. The universal behaviour of the scalar field and its potential is also calculated. We conclude that the phantom scalar field conformally coupled to gravity gives a natural dynamical mechanism of concentration of the equation of state coefficient around the magical value weff=−1$w_{\mathrm{eff}}=-1$. We demonstrate route to Lambda through the infinite times crossing the weff=−1$w_{\mathrm{eff}}=-1$ phantom divide.     

Inducing the Cosmological Constant from Five-Dimensional Weyl Space

We investigate the possibility of inducing the cosmological constant from extra dimensions by embedding our four-dimensional Riemannian space-time into a five-dimensional Weyl integrable space. Following the approach of the space-time-matter theory we show that when we go down from five to four dimensions, the Weyl field may contribute both to the induced energy-tensor as well as to the cosmological constant Λ, or more generally, it may generate a time-dependent cosmological parameter Λ(t). As an application, we construct a simple cosmological model in which Λ(t) has some interesting properties.     

Higher dimensional cosmologies

Einstein equations are derived for D-dimensional space-time that spontaneously compactify to the product M⁴ × Π_{i = 1}^α M^d_i in which the metric is taken to be of the generalized Robertson-Walker form. Cosmological solutions for these equations are studied with power law, oscillatory and exponential behaviour for the D-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell, N = 2, D = 10 and N = 1, D = 11 supergravity models. In the Einstein-Maxwell case the presence of a cosmological constant forces the extra dimensions to be static. Nevertheless, it is possible to find solutions with vanishing effective 4 dimensional cosmological constant with an expanding 4-dimensional space-time. In the supergravity models the requirement of having compact extra dimensions restricts the solutions to have expansion only in the 4-dimensional space-time. Matter contribution is added to the energy-momentum tensor in an attempt to find new solutions.     

Higher-dimensional Florides-like solution with cosmological constant

N-dimensional generalization of Florides' interior solution with cosmological constant and Kotller's exterior solution are presented here. The case of uniform density configuration is also considered. One can get back the solutions in four-dimensional space-time by puttingN=4 in the solutions presented here.     

Unified gravitational and Yang-Mills fields

We unify the gravitational and Yang-Mills fields by extending the diffeomorphisms in (N=4+n)-dimensional space-time to a larger group, called the conservation group. This is the largest group of coordinate transformations under which conservation laws are covariant statements. We present two theories that are invariant under the conservation group. Both theories have field equations that imply the validity of Einstein's equations for general relativity with the stress-energy tensor of a non-Abelian Yang-Mills field (with massive quanta) and associated currents. Both provide a geometrical foundation for string theory and admit solutions that describe the direct product of a compactn-dimensional space and flat four-dimensional space-time. One of the theories requires that the cosmological constant shall vanish. The conservation group symmetry is so large that there is reason to believe the theories are finite or renormalizable.     

Minimal immersions,Einstein's equations and Mach's principle

A geometrical stress energy tensor for semi-Riemannian manifolds is described and a Mach's principle is formulated. It is shown that vacuum occurs if and only if the manifold is a totally geodesic submanifold of a flat semi-Euclidean space. Furthermore the Einstein equations are attained with the cosmological constant appearing as the mean curvature of an isometric immersion. A minimal submanifold of a semi-Euclidean space can thereby be regarded as a solution to Einsteins equations without a cosmological constant. Intrinsic conditions that will allow a 4-dimensional semi-Riemannian manifold to be immersed isometrically into 5-dimensional semi-Euclidean space as a minimal hypersurface are found. From this result it is possible to find explicit minimal hypersurfaces of Robertson-Walker type in a 5-dimensional Minkowski space and it is observed that they all contain an initial singularity.     

Dynamical dimensional reduction

We propose to call a dynamical dimensional reduction effective if the corresponding dynamical system possesses a single attracting critical point representing expanding physical space-time and static internal space. We show that theBV × T ^D multidimensional cosmological model with a hydrodynamic energy-momentum tensor provides an example of effective dimensional reduction. We also study the dynamics of the multidimensional cosmological model of typeBI × T ^D with an energy-momentum tensor representing low temperature quantum effects, monopole contribution and the cosmological constant. It turns out that anisotropy and the cosmological constant are crucial for the process of dimensional reduction to be effective. We argue that this is the general property of homogeneous multidimensional cosmological models.     

The solution of the cosmological constant problem from the inhomogeneous equation of state — a hint from modified gravity?

The cosmological constant problem is studied in a two component cosmological model. The universe contains a cosmological constant of an arbitrary size and sign and an additional component with an inhomogeneous equation of state. It is shown that, in a proper parameter regime, the expansion of the universe with a large absolute value of the cosmological constant may asymptotically tend to de Sitter space corresponding to a small effective positive cosmological constant. It is argued that such a behavior can be regarded as a solution of the cosmological constant problem in this model. The mechanism behind the relaxation of the cosmological constant is discussed. A connection with modified gravity theories is discussed and an example of a possible realization of the cosmological constant relaxation in f(R) modified gravity is described.     

Classification of Static, Spherically Symmetric Solutions of the Einstein-Yang-Mills Theory with Positive Cosmological Constant

We give a complete classification of all static, spherically symmetric solutions of the SU(2) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a positive cosmological constant. Our classification proceeds in two steps. We first extend solutions of the radial field equations to their maximal interval of existence. In a second step we determine the Carter-Penrose diagrams of all 4-dimensional space-times constructible from such radial pieces. Based on numerical studies we sketch a complete phase space picture of all solutions with a regular origin.     

Time-like geodesic structure of a spherically symmetric black hole in the brane-world

Recently Malihe Heydari-Fard obtained a spherically symmetric exterior black hole solution in the brane-world scenario, which can be used to explain the galaxy rotation curves without postulating dark matter. By analysing the particle effective potential, we have investigated the time-like geodesic structure of the spherically symmetric black hole in the brane-world. We mainly take account of how the cosmological constant α and the stellar pressure β affect the time-like geodesic structure of the black hole. We find that the radial particle falls to the singularity from a finite distance or plunges into the singularity, depending on its initial conditions. But the non-radial time-like geodesic structure is more complex than the radial case. We find that the particle moves on the bound orbit or stable (unstable) circle orbit or plunges into the singularity, or reflects to infinity, depending on its energy and initial conditions. By comparing the particle effective potential curves for different values of the stellar pressure β and the cosmological constant α, we find that the stellar pressure parameter β does not affect the time-like geodesic structure of the black hole, but the cosmological constant α has an impact on its time-like geodesic structure.     

A kinematical approach to conformal cosmology

We present an alternative cosmology based on conformal gravity, as originally introduced by H. Weyl and recently revisited by P. Mannheim and D. Kazanas. Unlike past similar attempts our approach is a purely kinematical application of the conformal symmetry to the Universe, through a critical reanalysis of fundamental astrophysical observations, such as the cosmological redshift and others. As a result of this novel approach we obtain a closed-form expression for the cosmic scale factor R(t) and a revised interpretation of the space–time coordinates usually employed in cosmology. New fundamental cosmological parameters are introduced and evaluated. This emerging new cosmology does not seem to possess any of the controversial features of the current standard model, such as the presence of dark matter, dark energy or of a cosmological constant, the existence of the horizon problem or of an inflationary phase. Comparing our results with current conformal cosmologies in the literature, we note that our kinematic cosmology is equivalent to conformal gravity with a cosmological constant at late (or early) cosmological times. The cosmic scale factor and the evolution of the Universe are described in terms of several dimensionless quantitites, among which a new cosmological variable δ emerges as a natural cosmic time. The mathematical connections between all these quantities are described in details and a relationship is established with the original kinematic cosmology by L. Infeld and A. Schild. The mathematical foundations of our kinematical conformal cosmology will need to be checked against current astrophysical experimental data, before this new model can become a viable alternative to the standard theory.     

Spontaneous compactification in quantum Kaluza-Klein theories

We study the one-loop effective action for pure gravity in higher odd-dimensional spaces with a cosmological constant. We develop a method for computing the effective action for backgrounds which are a product of 4-dimensional space-time and an odd-dimensional sphere S^N. For N = 1 in harmonic gauge the potential has an unstable stationary point at which the one-loop corrected Newton constant has a wrong sign. For N > 1 in harmonic gauge there is an imaginary contribution to the effective potential from the Faddeev-Popov ghost. The results for spheres up to N = 17 are presented.     

No black-hole theorem in three-dimensional gravity

A common property of known black-hole solutions in (2+1)-dimensional gravity is that they require a negative cosmological constant. To explain this, it is shown in this Letter that a (2+1)-dimensional gravity theory which satisfies the dominant energy condition forbids the existence of a black hole.