1207.1800 (Emmanuel N. Saridakis)

Phantom crossing and quintessence limit in extended nonlinear massive
gravity    [PDF]

Emmanuel N. Saridakis

We investigate the cosmological evolution in a universe governed by the extended, varying-mass, nonlinear massive gravity, in which the graviton mass is promoted to a scalar-field. We find that the dynamics always leads the varying graviton mass to zero at late times, offering a natural explanation for its hugely-constrained observed value. Despite the limit of the scenario towards standard quintessence, at early and intermediate times it gives rise to an effective dark energy sector of a dynamical nature, which can also lie in the phantom regime, from which it always exits naturally, escaping a Big-Rip. Interestingly enough, although the motivation of massive gravity is to obtain an IR modification, its varying-mass extension in cosmological frameworks leads rather to early and intermediate times modification, and thus to a UV modification instead.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1800