In this paper we study a novel means of coupling neutrinos to a Lorentz violating background k-essence field. We first look into the effect that k-essence has on the neutrino dispersion relation and derive a general formula for the neutrino velocity in the presence on a k-essence background. The influence of k-essence coupling on neutrino oscillations is then considered. It is found that a non-diagonal k-essence coupling leads to an oscillation length that goes like lambda sim E^{-1} where E is the energy. This should be contrasted with the lambda sim E dependence seen in the standard mass-induced mechanism of neutrino oscillations. While such a scenario is not favored experimentally, it places constraints on the interactions of the neutrino with a cosmological k-essence scalar background by requiring it to be flavor diagonal. All non-trivial physical effects discussed here require the speed of sound to be different from the speed of light and hence are primarily a consequence of Lorentz violation.
We calculate the cosmological complexity under the framework of scalar curvature perturbations for a K-essence model with constant potential. In particular, the squeezed quantum states are defined by acting a two-mode squeezed operator which is characterized by squeezing parameters $r_k$ and $phi_k$ on vacuum state. The evolution of these squeezing parameters are governed by the $Schrddot{o}dinger$ equation, in which the Hamiltonian operator is derived from the cosmological perturbative action. With aid of the solutions of $r_k$ and $phi_k$, one can calculate the quantum circuit complexity between unsqueezed vacuum state and squeezed quantum states via the wave-function approach. One advantage of K-essence is that it allows us to explore the effects of varied sound speeds on evolution of cosmological complexity. Besides, this model also provides a way for us to distinguish the different cosmological phases by extracting some basic informations, like the scrambling time and Lyapunov exponent etc, from the evolution of cosmological complexity.
We perform numerical simulations of the gravitational collapse of a k-essence scalar field. When the field is sufficiently strongly gravitating, a black hole forms. However, the black hole has two horizons: a light horizon (the ordinary black hole horizon) and a sound horizon that traps k-essence. In certain cases the k-essence signals can travel faster than light and the sound horizon is inside the light horizon. Under those circumstances, k-essence signals can escape from the black hole. Eventually, the two horizons merge and the k-essence signals can no longer escape.
Caustic singularity formations in shift-symmetric $k$-essence and Horndeski theories on a fixed Minkowski spacetime were recently argued. In $n$ dimensions, this singularity is the $(n-2)$-dimensional plane in spacetime at which second derivatives of a field diverge and the field loses single-valued description for its evolution. This does not necessarily imply a pathological behavior of the system but rather invalidates the effective description. The effective theory would thus have to be replaced by another to describe the evolution thereafter. In this paper, adopting the planar-symmetric $1$+$1$-dimensional approach employed in the original analysis, we seek all $k$-essence theories in which generic simple wave solutions are free from such caustic singularities. Contrary to the previous claim, we find that not only the standard canonical scalar but also the DBI scalar are free from caustics, as far as planar-symmetric simple wave solutions are concerned. Addition of shift-symmetric Horndeski terms does not change the conclusion.
We construct wormholes in Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet theories with a potential for the scalar field that includes a mass term and self-interaction terms. By varying the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant we delimit the domain of existence of wormholes in these theories. The presence of the self-interaction enlarges the domain of existence significantly. There arise wormholes with a single throat and wormholes with an equator and a double throat. We determine the physical properties of these wormholes including their mass, their size and their geometry.
We consider the linear perturbations for the single scalar field inflation model interacting with an additional triad of scalar fields. The background solutions of the three additional scalar fields depend on spatial coordinates with a constant gradient $alpha$ and the ensuing evolution preserves the homogeneity of the cosmological principle. After we discuss the properties of background evolution including an exact solution for the exponential-type potential, we investigate the linear perturbations of the scalar and tensor modes in the background of the slow-roll inflation. In our model with small $alpha$, the comoving wavenumber has {it a lower bound} $sim alpha M_{rm P}$ to have well-defined initial quantum states. We find that cosmological quantities, for instance, the power spectrums and spectral indices of the comoving curvature and isocurvature perturbations, and the running of the spectral indices have small corrections depending on {it the lower bound}. Similar behaviors happen for the tensor perturbation with the same lower bound.