Cosmology and singularities in massive gravity /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Gratia, Pierre, author.
Imprint:2015.
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2015
Description:1 electronic resource (89 pages)
Language:English
Format: E-Resource Dissertations
Local Note:School code: 0330
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10773326
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:University of Chicago. degree granting institution.
ISBN:9781339097831
Notes:Advisors: Waybe Hu Committee members: Juan Collar; Wayne Hu; Carlos Wagner; Robert Wald.
Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 77-02(E), Section: B.
English
Summary:In my thesis, I focus on the theory of massive gravity and its cosmological implications. I show that a massive graviton leads to self-acceleration, and that a whole class of solutions possess this property, including FRW universes. Subsequently, I investigate fluctuations around these solutions, and show that they are stable, at least for spherically symmetric fluctuations. Massive gravity also contains a coordinate-independent determinant singularity that shows up in specific examples with well-defined initial conditions, and that cannot be dynamically avoided. The vierbein formulation of massive gravity is particularly suited to address this issue. It can be seen that a commonly chosen convention is not supported by the vierbein formalism. Finally, I look at the appearance and properties of similar singularities in bimetric gravity, in which the second, fiducial metric is allowed to evolve independently of the spacetime metric. I find that while determinant singularities continue to show up in bimetric massive gravity theories, physical quantities such as curvature remain finite as they cross them.