The information loss paradox is usually stated as an incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics. However, the assumptions leading to the problem are often overlooked and, in fact, a careful inspection of the main hypothesises su
ggests a radical reformulation of the problem. Indeed, we present a thought experiment involving a black hole that emits radiation and, independently of the nature of the radiation, we show the existence of an incompatibility between (i) the validity of the laws of general relativity to describe infalling matter far from the Planckian regime, and (ii) the so-called central dogma which states that as seen from an outside observer a black hole behaves like a quantum system whose number of degrees of freedom is proportional to the horizon area. We critically revise the standard arguments in support of the central dogma, and argue that they cannot hold true unless some new physics is invoked even before reaching Planck scales. This suggests that the information loss problem, in its current formulation, is not necessarily related to any loss of information or lack of unitarity. Therefore, in principle, semiclassical general relativity and quantum mechanics can be perfectly compatible before reaching the final stage of the black hole evaporation where, instead, a consistent theory of quantum gravity is needed to make any prediction.
We study spherically symmetric spacetimes in Einstein-aether theory in three different coordinate systems, the isotropic, Painlev`e-Gullstrand, and Schwarzschild coordinates, in which the aether is always comoving, and present both time-dependent and
time-independent exact vacuum solutions. In particular, in the isotropic coordinates we find a class of exact static solutions characterized by a single parameter $c_{14}$ in closed forms, which satisfies all the current observational constraints of the theory, and reduces to the Schwarzschild vacuum black hole solution in the decoupling limit ($c_{14} = 0$). However, as long as $c_{14} ot= 0$, a marginally trapped throat with a finite non-zero radius always exists, and in one side of it the spacetime is asymptotically flat, while in the other side the spacetime becomes singular within a finite proper distance from the throat, although the geometric area is infinitely large at the singularity. Moreover, the singularity is a strong and spacetime curvature singularity, at which both of the Ricci and Kretschmann scalars become infinitely large.
We investigate the ringdown waveform and reflectivity of a Lifshitz scalar field around a fixed Schwarzschild black hole. The radial wave equation is modified due to the Lorentz breaking terms, which leads to a diversity of ringdown waveforms. Also,
it turns out that Lifshitz waves scattered by the Schwarzschild black hole exhibits superradiance. The Lorentz breaking terms lead to superluminal propagation and high-frequency modes can enter and leave the interior of the Killing horizon where negativity of energy is not prohibited. This allows the Lifshitz waves to carry out additional positive energy to infinity while leaving negative energy inside the Killing horizon, similar to the Penrose process in the ergosphere of a Kerr spacetime. Another interesting phenomenon is emergence of long-lived quasinormal modes, associated with roton-type dispersion relations. These effects drastically modify the greybody factor of a microscopic black hole, whose Hawking temperature is comparable with or higher than the Lifshitz energy scale.
Following the path of minimalism in alternative theories of gravity, we construct the Minimal Theory of Bigravity (MTBG), a theory of two interacting spin-2 fields that propagates only four local degrees of freedom instead of the usual seven ones and
that allows for the same homogeneous and isotropic cosmological solutions as in Hassan-Rosen bigravity (HRBG). Starting from a precursor theory that propagates six local degrees of freedom, we carefully choose additional constraints to eliminate two of them to construct the theory. Investigating the cosmology of MTBG, we find that it accommodates two different branches of homogeneous and isotropic background solutions, equivalent on-shell to the two branches that are present in HRBG. Those branches in MTBG differ however from the HRBG ones at the perturbative level, are both perfectly healthy and do not exhibit strong coupling issues nor ghost instabilities. In the so-called self-accelerating branch, characterized by the presence of an effective cosmological constant, the scalar and vector sectors are the same as in General Relativity (GR). In the so-called normal branch, the scalar sector exhibits non-trivial phenomenology, while its vector sector remains the same as in GR. In both branches, the tensor sector exhibits the usual HRBG features: an effective mass term and oscillations of the gravitons. Therefore MTBG provides a stable nonlinear completion of the cosmology in HRBG.
We examine the post-Newtonian limit of the minimal exponential measure (MEMe) model presented in [J. C. Feng, S. Carloni, Phys. Rev. D 101, 064002 (2020)] using an extension of the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism which is also suitable f
or other type-I minimally modified Gravity theories. The new PPN expansion is then used to calculate the monopole term of the post-Newtonian gravitational potential and to perform an analysis of circular orbits within spherically symmetric matter distributions. The latter shows that the behavior does not differ significantly from that of general relativity for realistic values of the MEMe model parameter $q$. Instead the former shows that one can use precision measurements of Newtons constant $G$ to improve the constraint on $q$ by up to $10$ orders of magnitude.
We present a scenario of vector dark matter production during inflation containing a complex inflaton field which is charged under a dark gauge field and which has a symmetry breaking potential. As the inflaton field rolls towards the global minimum
of the potential the dark photons become massive with a mass which can be larger than the Hubble scale during inflation. The accumulated energy of the quantum fluctuations of the produced dark photons gives the observed relic density of the dark matter for a wide range of parameters. Depending on the parameters, either the transverse modes or the longitudinal mode or their combination can generate the observed dark matter relic energy density.
We propose a new cosmological framework in which the strength of the gravitational force acted on dark matter at late time can be weaker than that on the standard matter fields without introducing extra gravitational degrees of freedom. The framework
integrates dark matter into a type-II minimally modified gravity that was recently proposed as a dark energy mimicker. The idea that makes such a framework possible consists of coupling a dark matter Lagrangian and a cosmological constant to the metric in a canonically transformed frame of general relativity (GR). On imposing a gauge fixing constraint, which explicitly breaks the temporal diffeomorphism invariance, we keep the number of gravitational degrees of freedom to be two, as in GR. We then make the inverse canonical transformation to bring the theory back to the original frame, where one can add the standard matter fields. This framework contains two free functions of time which specify the generating functional of the above mentioned canonical transformation and which are then used in order to realize desired time evolutions of both the Hubble expansion rate $H(z)$ and the effective gravitational constant for dark matter $G_{rm eff}(z)$. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide a new framework to address the two puzzles present in todays cosmology, i.e. the $H_0$ tension and the $S_8$ tension, simultaneously. When the dark matter is cold in this framework, we dub the corresponding cosmological model the V Canonical Cold Dark Matter (VCCDM), as the cosmological constant $Lambda$ in the standard $Lambda$CDM is replaced by a function $V(phi)$ of an auxiliary field $phi$ and the CDM is minimally coupled to the metric in a canonically transformed frame.
The $k$-essence theory is a prototypical class of scalar-field models that already gives rich phenomenology and has been a target of extensive studies in cosmology. General forms of shift-symmetric $k$-essence are known to suffer from formation of ca
ustics in a planar-symmetric configuration, with the only exceptions of canonical and DBI-/cuscuton-type kinetic terms. With this in mind, we seek for multi-field caustic-free completions of a general class of shift-symmetric $k$-essence models in this paper. The field space in UV theories is naturally curved, and we introduce the scale of the curvature as the parameter that controls the mass of the heavy field(s) that would be integrated out in the process of EFT reduction. By numerical methods, we demonstrate that the introduction of a heavy field indeed resolves the caustic problem by invoking its motion near the would-be caustic formation. We further study the cosmological application of the model. By expanding the equations with respect to the curvature scale of the field space, we prove that the EFT reduction is successfully done by taking the limit of infinite curvature, both for the background and perturbation, with gravity included. The next leading-order computation is consistently conducted and shows that the EFT reduction breaks down in the limit of vanishing sound speed of the perturbation.
A stealth de Sitter solution in scalar-tensor theories has an exact de Sitter background metric and a nontrivial scalar field profile. Recently, in the context of Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor (DHOST) theories it was shown that stealth de Sit
ter solutions suffer from either infinite strong coupling or gradient instability for scalar field perturbations. The sound speed squared is either vanishing or negative. In the first case, the strong coupling scale is zero and thus lower than the energy scale of any physical phenomena. From the viewpoint of effective field theory, this issue is naturally resolved by introducing a controlled detuning of the degeneracy condition dubbed scordatura, recovering a version of ghost condensation. In this paper we construct a viable dark energy model in the scordatura DHOST theory based on a stealth cosmological solution, in which the metric is the same as in the standard $Lambda$CDM model and the scalar field profile is linearly time-dependent. We show that the scordatura mechanism resolves the strong coupling and gradient instability. Further, we find that the scordatura is also necessary to make the quasi-static limit well-defined, which implies that the subhorizon observables are inevitably affected by the scordatura. We derive the effective gravitational coupling and the correction to the friction term for the subhorizon evolution of the linear dark matter energy density contrast as well as the Weyl potential and the gravitational slip parameter. In the absence of the scordatura, the quasi-static approximation would break down at all scales around stealth cosmological solutions even if the issue of the infinite strong coupling is unjustly disregarded. Therefore previous estimations of the subhorizon evolution of matter density contrast in modified gravity in the literature need to be revisited by taking into account the scordatura effect.
In this letter we propose a reduction of the $H_0$ tension puzzle by means of a theory of minimally modified gravity which is dubbed VCDM. After confronting the theory with the experiments, we find that the data allow for a low-redshift transition in
the expansion history of the universe at either $zsimeq 0.3 $ or $z simeq 1.8,$, corresponding to one of the two local minima of the total $chi^2$. From the bestfit values the total fitness parameter is improved by $Delta chi^2 simeq 12$, for the data set considered. We then infer the local Hubble expansion rate today within this theory by means of low redshift Pantheon data. The resulting local Hubble expansion rate today is $H^{rm{loc}}_0=73.6pm1.4$. We find the tension is reduced within the VCDM theory.
