The effective vacuum energy density contributed by the non-trivial contortion distribution and the bare vacuum energy density can be viewed as the energy density of the auxiliary quintessence field potential. We find that the negative bare vacuum energy density from string landscape leads to a monotonically decreasing quintessence potential while the positive one from swampland leads to the meta stable or stable de Sitter like potential. Moreover, the non-trivial Brans-Dicke like coupling between quintessence field and gravitation field is necessary in the latter case.
Since the evidence for an accelerated universe and the gap of 70% in the total energy, collected by WMAP, search for alternatives for the general relativity is an important issue, for this theory is not suited for these new phenomena. A particular alternative is the Brans-Dicke theory which has being allowing inspiring results, for example, concerning k-essence type fields in 4 dimensions. However, this theory is almost unexplored in the context of the dimensional reduction of the theory in 3 dimensions. In this work, we address some problems in this dimensional reduction, namely, evaluation of the deceleration parameter of the universe described by the 3 dimensional Brans-Dicke with and without matter. In both cases, we see that it is not possible to consider the theory as a model of k-essence descrybing the dark energy, but it can be considered as descrybing the dark matter.
In the context of generalised Brans-Dicke cosmology we use the Killing tensors of the minisuperspace in order to determine the unspecified potential of a scalar-tensor gravity theory. Specifically, based on the existence of contact symmetries of the field equations, we find four types of potentials which provide exactly integrable dynamical systems. We investigate the dynamical properties of these potentials by using a critical point analysis and we find solutions which lead to cosmic acceleration and under specific conditions we can have de-Sitter points as stable late-time attractors.
The purpose of this study is to investigate observational features of Brans-Dicke wormholes in a case if they exist in our Universe. The energy flux from accretion onto a Brans-Dicke wormhole and the so-called maximum impact parameter are studied (the last one might allow to observe light sources through a wormhole throat). The computed values were compared with the corresponding ones for GR-wormholes and Schwarzschild black holes. We shown that Brans-Dicke wormholes are quasi-Schwarzschild objects and should differ from GR wormholes by about one order of magnitude in the accretion energy flux.
We present an explicit detailed theoretical and observational investigation of an anisotropic massive Brans-Dicke (BD) gravity extension of the standard $Lambda$CDM model, wherein the extension is characterized by two additional degrees of freedom; the BD parameter, $omega$, and the present day density parameter corresponding to the shear scalar, $Omega_{sigma^2,0}$. The BD parameter, determining the deviation from general relativity (GR), by alone characterizes both the dynamics of the effective dark energy (DE) and the redshift dependence of the shear scalar. These two affect each other depending on $omega$, namely, the shear scalar contributes to the dynamics of the effective DE, and its anisotropic stress --which does not exist in scalar field models of DE within GR-- controls the dynamics of the shear scalar deviating from the usual $propto(1+z)^6$ form in GR. We mainly confine the current work to non-negative $omega$ values as it is the right sign --theoretically and observationally-- for investigating the model as a correction to the $Lambda$CDM. By considering the current cosmological observations, we find that $omegagtrsim 250$, $Omega_{sigma^2,0}lesssim 10^{-23}$ and the contribution of the anisotropy of the effective DE to this value is insignificant. We conclude that the simplest anisotropic massive BD gravity extension of the standard $Lambda$CDM model exhibits no significant deviations from it all the way to the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We also point out the interesting features of the model in the case of negative $omega$ values; for instance, the constraints on $Omega_{sigma^2,0}$ could be relaxed considerably, the values of $omegasim-1$ (relevant to string theories) predict dramatically different dynamics for the expansion anisotropy.
Intermediate/Extreme mass ratio inspiral (IMRI/EMRI) system provides a good tool to test the nature of gravity in strong field. We construct the self-force and use the self-force method to generate accurate waveform templates for IMRIS/EMRIs on quasi-elliptical orbits in Brans-Dicke theory. The extra monopole and dipole emissions in Brans-Dicke theory accelerate the orbital decay, so the observations of gravitational waves may place stronger constraint on Brans-Dicke theory. With a two-year observations of gravitational waves emitted from IMRIs/EMRIs with LISA, we can get the most stringent constraint on the Brans-Dicke coupling parameter $omega_0>10^5$.