Alternative Theories of Gravity

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new funda...

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new fundamental fields. The synthesis of these results has the potential to radically reshape our understanding of the cosmos and of the laws of Nature. The purpose of this work is to present a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the relevant fields of research, summarize important open problems, and lay out a roadmap for future progress.

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new fundamental fields. The synthesis of these results has the potential to radically reshape our understanding of the cosmos and of the laws of Nature. The purpose of this work is to present a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the relevant fields of research, summarize important open problems, and lay out a roadmap for future progress.

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new funda...

Synopsis : This directory, available exclusively in English,includes scientists who propose alternative theories or who disagree on generally accepted positions exclusively in the field of physics (natural philosophy), referenced to on the Internet.

The list includes 9000 names of scientists, doctors ou engineers for more than 50%. Their position is shortly presented  together with their proposed alternative theory when applicable. There are more than 1000  theories, all amazingly very different from one another.

This book is covered by copyrights. Short citations only are allowed and shall make reference to the author.

We argue in favor of the physical basis of YARK theory of gravity and show that the major part of recent criticism by Corda (Corda, C. Symmetry 2018, 10, 558-559) is based on either irrelevant or erroneous claims. We highlight a perfect agreement of YARK theory with the results of the Mössbauer experiments in a rotating system and demonstrate that the so-called "synchronization effect" proposed by Corda to account for the outcome of these experiments stems from an elementary mathematical error and must be rejected. Finally, we show that YARK theory provides a consistent alternative explanation of the origin of the LIGO signals beyond the hypothesis about gravitational waves. [http://vixra.org/pdf/1902.0070v1.pdf]

The quantization of a massless conformally coupled scalar field on the 2+1 dimensional Anti de Sitter black hole background is presented. The Green's function is calculated, using the fact that the black hole is Anti de Sitter space with points identified, and taking into account the fact that the black hole spacetime is not globally hyperbolic. It is shown that the Green's function calculated in this way is the Hartle-Hawking Green's function. The Green's function is used to compute $\langle T^\mu_\nu \rangle$, which is regular on the black hole horizon, and diverges at the singularity. A particle detector response function outside the horizon is also calculated and shown to be a fermi type distribution. The back-reaction from $\langle T_{\mu\nu} \rangle$ is calculated exactly and is shown to give rise to a curvature singularity at $r=0$ and to shift the horizon outwards. For $M=0$ a horizon develops, shielding the singularity. Some speculations about the endpoint of evaporation are discussed.

We review the generalized Witten-Nester spinor stability argument for flat domain wall solutions of gravitational theories. Neither the field theory nor the solution need be supersymmetric. Nor is the space-time dimension restricted. We develop the non-trivial extension required for AdS-sliced domain walls and apply this to show that the recently proposed "Janus" solution of Type IIB supergravity is stable non-perturbatively for a broad class of deformations. Generalizations of this solution to arbitrary dimension and a simple curious linear dilaton solution of Type IIB supergravity are byproducts of this work.

We calculate the angular scale of the acoustic oscillation from the BOOMERANG and WMAP data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to constrain the holographic dark energy model recently proposed by Li. We find that only the phantomlike holographic dark energy survives the cosmological tests. This is, however, inconsistent with the positive energy condition implicitly assumed in constructing Li's model.

We extend the covariant analysis of the brane cosmological evolution in order to take into account, apart from a general matter content and an induced-gravity term on the brane, a Gauss-Bonnet term in the bulk. The gravitational effect of the bulk matter on the brane evolution can be described in terms of the total bulk mass as measured by a bulk observer at the location of the brane. This mass appears in the effective Friedmann equation through a term characterized as generalized dark radiation that induces mirage effects in the evolution. We discuss the normal and self-accelerating branches of the combined system. We also derive the Raychaudhuri equation that can be used in order to determine if the cosmological evolution is accelerating.

Motivated by recent suggestions that highly damped black hole quasinormal modes (QNM's) may provide a link between classical general relativity and quantum gravity, we present an extensive computation of highly damped QNM's of Kerr black holes. We do not limit our attention to gravitational modes, thus filling some gaps in the existing literature. The frequency of gravitational modes with l=m=2 tends to \omega_R=2 \Omega, \Omega being the angular velocity of the black hole horizon. If Hod's conjecture is valid, this asymptotic behaviour is related to reversible black hole transformations. Other highly damped modes with m>0 that we computed do not show a similar behaviour. The real part of modes with l=2 and m<0 seems to asymptotically approach a constant value \omega_R\simeq -m\varpi, \varpi\simeq 0.12 being (almost) independent of a. For any perturbing field, trajectories in the complex plane of QNM's with m=0 show a spiralling behaviour, similar to the one observed for Reissner-Nordstrom (RN) black holes. Finally, for any perturbing field, the asymptotic separation in the imaginary part of consecutive modes with m>0 is given by 2\pi T_H (T_H being the black hole temperature). We conjecture that for all values of l and m>0 there is an infinity of modes tending to the critical frequency for superradiance (\omega_R=m) in the extremal limit. Finally, we study in some detail modes branching off the so--called ``algebraically special frequency'' of Schwarzschild black holes. For the first time we find numerically that QNM multiplets emerge from the algebraically special Schwarzschild modes, confirming a recent speculation.

We show that in a generic scalar-tensor theory of gravity, the ``referenced&#x27;&#x27; quasilocal mass of a spatially bounded region in a classical solution is invariant under conformal transformations of the spacetime metric. We first extend the Brown-York quasilocal formalism to such theories to obtain the ``unreferenced&#x27;&#x27; quasilocal mass and prove it to be conformally invariant. However, this quantity is typically divergent. It is, therefore, essential to subtract from it a properly defined reference term to obtain a finite and physically meaningful quantity, namely, the referenced quasilocal mass. The appropriate reference term in this case is defined by generalizing the Hawking-Horowitz prescription, which was originally proposed for general relativity. For such a choice of reference term, the referenced quasilocal mass for a general spacetime solution is obtained. This expression is shown to be a conformal invariant provided the conformal factor is a monotonic funct...

We present a Relativistic Newtonian Dynamics (RND) for motion of objects in a gravitational field generated by a moving source. As in General Relativity (GR), we assume that objects move by a geodesic with respect to some metric, which is defined by the field. This metric is defined on flat lab spacetime and is derived using only symmetry, the fact that the field propagates with the speed of light, and the Newtonian limit. For a field of a single source, the influenced direction of the field at spacetime point x is defined as the direction from x to the to the position of the source at the retarded time. The metric depends only on this direction and the strength of the field at x. We show that for a static source, the RND metric is of the same form as the Whitehead metric, and the Schwarzschild metric in Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates. Motion predicted under this model passes all classical tests of GR. Moreover, in this model, the total time for a round trip of light is as predicted by GR, but velocities of light and object and time dilation differ from the GR predictions. For example, light rays propagating toward the massive object do not slow down. The new time dilation prediction could be observed by measuring the relativistic redshift for stars near a black hole and for sungrazing comets. Terrestrial experiments to test speed of light predictions and the relativistic redshift are proposed. The RND model is similar to Whitehead's gravitation model for a static field, but its proposed extension to the non-static case is different. This extension uses a complex four-potential description of fields propagating with the speed of light.

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new funda...

In the following GR9 (1980) Conference abstract, we briefly considered a covariant reformulation of the GR from three points of view: geometrodynamics, Lagrange-Euler field theory, and gauge field theory. From a perspective of geometrodynamics, a definition of a reference frame as a dierential manifold with an ane connection results in separation of the respective contributions of inertial and gravitational fields represented by the ane connection and the nonmetricity tensor within the Levi-Civita connection of GR. Resulting decomposition of Riemannian, Ricci and Einstein curvature tensors into ane and nonmetric parts allows recasting of Einstein’s field equations in a form invariant with respect to the choice of a reference frame, wherein the gravity is described by nonmetricity of space-time. A covariant Lagrangian is proposed leading to the same field equation. All three approaches ultimately lead to the same fully covariant theory of gravitation with a covariant tensor of energy...

By using an isotropic field configuration for the triplet ansatz sector of the metric-affine theories of gravity (MAG), we find a class of harmonic solutions which represents the interior and exterior field of a distribution endowed with electric and strong gravitoelectric multipole moments. Moreover, the general matching and junction conditions in MAG and their reduction to the triplet ansatz sector are presented.

We use the counterterm subtraction method to calculate the action and stress-energy-momentum tensor for the (Kerr) rotating black holes in AdS_{n+1}, for n=2, 3 and 4. We demonstrate that the expressions for the total energy for the Kerr-AdS_3 and Kerr-AdS_5 spacetimes, in the limit of vanishing black hole mass, are equal to the Casimir energies of the holographically dual n-dimensional conformal field theories. In particular, for Kerr-AdS_5, dual to the case of four dimensional N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on the rotating Einstein universe, we explicitly verify the equality of the zero mass stress tensor from the two sides of the correspondence, and present the result for general mass as a prediction from gravity. Amusingly, it is observed in four dimensions that while the trace of the stress tensor defined using the standard counterterms does not vanish, its integral does, thereby keeping the action free of ultraviolet divergences. Using a different regularisation scheme a...

Various features of domain walls in supersymmetric gluodynamics are discussed. We give a simple field-theoretic interpretation of the phenomenon of strings ending on the walls recently conjectured by Witten. An explanation of this phenomenon in the framework of gauge field theory is outlined. The phenomenon is argued to be particularly natural in supersymmetric theories which support degenerate vacuum states with distinct physical properties. The issue of existence (or non-existence) of the BPS saturated walls in the theories with glued (super)potentials is addressed. The amended Veneziano-Yankielowicz effective Lagrangian belongs to this class. The physical origin of the cusp structure of the effective Lagrangian is revealed, and the limitation it imposes on the calculability of the wall tension is explained. Related problems are considered. In particular, it is shown that the so called discrete anomaly matching, when properly implemented, does not rule out the chirally symmetric phase of supersymmetric gluodynamics, contrary to recent claims.

A classical pp-wave is a four-dimensional Lorentzian spacetime which admits a nonvanishing parallel spinor field; here the connection is assumed to be Levi-Civita. We generalize this definition to metric compatible spacetimes with torsion and describe basic properties of such spacetimes. We use our generalized pp-waves for constructing new explicit vacuum solutions of quadratic metric-affine gravity.