The effective field theory of dark energy

By Giulia Gubitosi, F. Piazza, F. Vernizzi. 2012

479 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We propose a universal description of dark energy and modified gravity that includes all single-field models. By extending a formalism previously applied to inflation, we consider the metric universally coupled to matter fields and we write in terms of it the most general unitary gauge action consistent with the residual unbroken symmetries of spatial diffeomorphisms. Our action is particularly suited for cosmological perturbation theory: the background evolution depends on only three operators. All other operators start at least at quadratic order in the perturbations and their effects can be studied independently and systematically. In particular, we focus on the properties of a few operators which appear in non-minimally coupled scalar-tensor gravity and galileon theories. In this context, we study the mixing between gravity and the scalar degree of freedom. We assess the quantum and classical stability, derive the speed of sound of fluctuations and the renormalization of the Newton constant. The scalar can always be de-mixed from gravity at quadratic order in the perturbations, but not necessarily through a conformal rescaling of the metric. We show how to express covariant field-operators in our formalism and give several explicit examples of dark energy and modified gravity models in our language. Finally, we discuss the relation with the covariant EFT methods recently appeared in the literature.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bcde73aa4623cd8ca14d8e38b5f46cc20af5243

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Citations in the corpus

Effective field theory of cosmological perturbations (2013, background): “The fact that only three operators, f (t)R, c(t)g00 and (t), contribute to the background evolution is a non-trivial consequence of the high number of symmetries of the FRW solution [8, 31].”
A systematic approach to generalisations of General Relativity and their cosmological implications (2018, background): “Using the language of effective description of dark energy [233, 234, 235] in terms of lapse, shift and the extrinsic curvature, the quadratic action for DHOST can be written as [236]”
Dark Energy in Light of Multi-Messenger Gravitational-Wave Astronomy (2018, background): “Different versions of the linear EFT-DE approach has been implemented in numerical codes able to obtain predictions based on linear perturbation theory.”
Extended scalar-tensor theories of gravity (2016, methodology): “Then, we turn to cosmology and examine the possible relevance of EST theories for dark energy, using the language of the Effective Field Theory (EFT) of dark energy [17, 18].”
Maximal freedom at minimum cost: linear large-scale structure in general modifications of gravity (2014, background): “[34, 36] M2 ∗ f + 2m 2 4 M 2 ∗ ḟ + 2 ( m(2)4 )· 2c+ 4M4 2 −m(3)3 −M2 ∗ ḟ −2m(2)4 Piazza et al.”
Exploring gravitational theories beyond Horndeski (2014, background): “Finally, it is also easy to make connection with the (slightly different) notation adopted in [44], where the phenomenological aspects of dark energy were studied by using the formalism developed in [15, 16, 11, 17, 31].”
Cosmology and Fundamental Physics with the Euclid Satellite (2012, background): “6 Effective Field Theory of Dark Energy One of the most productive recent ideas in dark-energy cosmology has been the employing of effective field-theory methods originally developed for inflation [350, 304] to limit the space of possible parameterisations of gravity to that obtainable from local ac”
Effective field theory of dark energy: A review (2019, methodology): “ories [41, 45] such as Hořava gravity [46].”
Essential Building Blocks of Dark Energy (2013, methodology): “2 L3 Since L2 is trivial, following [11] we start from L3 and see how to rewrite it in the EFT of dark energy formalism.”
Dark energy or modified gravity? An effective field theory approach (2012, background): “[14] show how such an action can be converted into a covariant form.”
hi_class: Horndeski in the Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System (2016, background): “2 Description of Perturbation Dynamics Perhaps the most productive recent idea in dark-energy cosmology theory was to exploit the spatial homogeneity of the FRW background, leading to the approach of Effective Field Theory of Dark Energy (EFT) [55–57].”