2024/11/06 by Miguel A. S. Pinto, João Luís Rosa, Pinto, Miguel A. S. +1 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.04066
openalex publication_date 2024/11/06 · openalex created_date 2024/11/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
In this work, we analyze the Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet (EsGB) theory of gravity in a cosmological context using the formalism of dynamical systems. We obtain the equations of motion of the theory and introduce an appropriate set of dynamical variables to allow for a direct comparison with the results from General Relativity (GR). We observe that the cosmological phase space features the same set of fixed points as in standard GR, i.e., radiation-dominated, matter-dominated, curvature-dominated, and exponentially-accelerated solutions independently of the values of the coupling function and the scalar field. Furthermore, the radiation-dominated fixed points are repellers and the exponentially accelerated fixed points are attractors in the phase space, thus allowing for cosmological solutions behaving qualitatively similar to the ΛCDM model, i.e., transitioning from a radiation-dominated phase into a matter-dominated phase, and later into a late-time cosmic acceleration phase supported by the scalar field potential. Following a reconstruction method through which we produce the cosmological solutions in the GR limit of the theory and introduce them into the general EsGB dynamical system, a numerical integration of the dynamical system shows that the EsGB theory provides cosmological solutions indistinguishable from those of the standard ΛCDM model, compatible with the current observations from the Planck satellite and weak-field solar system dynamics, while maintaining the scalar field and the coupling function finite and regular throughout the entire time evolution.