arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sourav Sur.
It is generally assumed that any discrepancy between an object's inertial and gravitational masses, leading to a violation of the equivalence principle, arises from the nature of its internal constituents and their interactions. We show here that the difference can instead be a function of the distance of the object from a gravitating body, and suggest ways of testing this, illustrating side-by-side a covariant framework for the same.
We present a classical theory of gravity, which is singularity free at short distances and reduces to General Relativity at large distances. We discuss its implications.
We show that a slowly varying Newton's constant, consistent with existing bounds, can potentially explain a host of observations pertaining to gravitational effects or phenomena across distances spanning from planetary to the cosmological, relying neither on the existence of Dark Matter or (and) Dark Energy, nor on any expected high proportions of either of them in the Universe. It may also have implications at very short distances or quantum gravity scales.
We examine the viability of cosmological solution(s) describing a unified picture of the dark side of the universe from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of light bosons. The energy density of the BEC, together with its quantum potential, can indeed account for such a unification, in the sense that the (dust-like) cold dark matter and the dark energy components emerge from the same source. In particular, the bulk of the dark energy can be attributed to the quantum potential, in the quantum corrected Raychaudhuri-Friedmann equation, when the `macroscopic' BEC wave-function is taken to be such that the corresponding probability density is construed as the energy density of the dusty fluid. However, there arises a purely quantum mechanical back-reaction effect, of even the visible baryons, on the effective dark energy and dark matter contents, which crucially determines the mass of the BEC. We determine the constraint on such a back-reaction, and hence on the BEC mass, from physical considerations, as well as estimate the same using recent observational data.
The mass of an astrophysical object can be estimated by the amount of gravitational lensing of another object that it causes. To arrive at the estimation however, one assumes the validity of the inverse square law of gravity, or equivalently an attractive $1/r$ potential. We show that the above, augmented by a logarithmic potential at galactic length scales, proposed earlier to explain the flat galaxy rotation curves, predicts a larger deflection angle for a given mass. In other words, the true mass of the object is less than its estimated value. This may diminish the importance and role of dark matter in explaining various observations.
It has recently been shown that any observed potential can in principle be generated via quantum mechanics using a suitable wavefunction. In this work, we consider the concrete example of the gravitational potential experienced by a test particle at length scales spanning from the planetary to the cosmological, and determine the wavefunction that would produce it as its quantum potential. In other words, the observed gravitational interaction at all length scales can be generated by an underlying wavefunction. We discuss the implications of our result.
We show that Newton's gravitational potential, augmented by a logarithmic term, partly or wholly mitigates the need for dark matter. As a bonus, it also explains why MOND seems to work at galactic scales. We speculate on the origin of such a potential.
We carry out the dynamical system analysis of interacting dark energy-matter scenarios by examining the critical points and stability for not just the background level cosmological evolution, but at the level of the linear density perturbations as well. While an analysis at the background level can lead to a stable phase space trajectory implying that the universe eventually transpires to a dark energy dominated (de-Sitter) era, a two-fold degeneracy in the spectrum of the critical points is found to arise in the inhomogeneous picture, due to the possible growth and decay of matter density perturbations. Analyzing the phase space dynamics of the growth factor, we show that it turns out to be greater than unity initially, for one of the critical points, and leads to a stable configuration as the fluctuations in the matter density die out asymptotically. As to the growth index, we show that the only trajectory which is physically plausible is the one that evolves mildly at high redshifts and gets steeper as time progresses. However, such a trajectory amounts to the average value of the growth index, throughout the expansion history of the universe, not much deviated from the value $6/11$, corresponding to the background $Ł$CDM cosmology.
The dynamics of a quantum particle is governed by its wavefunction, which in turn is determined by the classical potential to which it is subjected. However the wavefunction itself induces a quantum potential, the particle `sees' the sum of the classical and quantum potentials, and there is no way to separate the two. Therefore in principle, part or whole of an observed potential may be attributable to a quantum potential. We examine this possibility and discuss implications.
We investigate the characteristic modifications in the evolving cosmological perturbations when dark energy interacts with dust-like matter, causing the latter's background energy density fall off with time faster than usual. Focusing in particular to the late-time cosmic evolution, we show that such an interaction (of a specific form, arising naturally in a scalar-tensor formulation, or a wide range of modified gravity equivalents thereof), can have a rather significant effect on the perturbative spectrum, than on the background configuration which is not expected to get distorted much from $Ł$CDM. Specifically, the matter density contrast, which is by and large scale-invariant in the deep sub-horizon limit, not only gets dragged as the interaction affects the background Hubble expansion rate, but also receives a contribution from the perturbation in the (scalar field induced) dark energy, which oscillates about a non-zero mean value. As such, the standard parametrization ansatz for the the matter density growth factor becomes inadequate. So we modify it suitably, and also find a numerical fit of the growth index in terms of the background parameters, in order to alleviate the problems that arise otherwise. Such a fit enables direct estimations of the background parameters, as well as the growth parameter and the reduced Hubble parameter, which we duly carry out using a redshift space distortion (RSD) subsample and its combination with the observational Hubble data. On the whole, the parametric estimates show consistency with the general observational constraints on the background level cosmology, as well as the constraints on scalar-tensor gravity from astrophysical observations, apart from having significance in the domain of cosmological perturbations.
We show that if one starts with a Universe with some matter and a cosmological constant, then quantum mechanics naturally induces an attractive gravitational potential and an effective Newton's coupling. Thus gravity is an emergent phenomenon and what should be quantized are the fundamental degrees of freedom from which it emerges.
It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that the majority (about 95%) of the total energy budget of the universe is given by the dark components, namely Dark Matter and Dark Energy. What constitutes these components remains to be satisfactorily understood however, despite a number of promising candidates. An associated conundrum is that of the coincidence, i.e. the question as to why the Dark Matter and Dark Energy densities are of the same order of magnitude at the present epoch, after evolving over the entire expansion history of the universe. In an attempt to address these, we consider a quantum potential resulting from a quantum corrected Raychaudhuri/Friedmann equation in presence of a cosmic fluid, which is presumed to be a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultralight bosons. For a suitable and physically motivated macroscopic ground state wavefunction of the BEC, we show that a unified picture of the cosmic dark sector can indeed emerge, thus resolving the issue of the coincidence. The effective Dark energy component turns out to be a cosmological constant, by virtue of a residual homogeneous term in the quantum potential. Furthermore, comparison with the observational data gives an estimate of the mass of the constituent bosons in the BEC, which is well within the bounds predicted from other considerations.
We study the growth of linear matter density perturbations in a modified gravity approach of scalar field couplings with metric and torsion. In the equivalent scalar-tensor formulation, the matter fields in the Einstein frame interact as usual with an effective dark energy component, whose dynamics is presumably governed by a scalar field that sources a torsion mode. As a consequence, the matter density ceases to be self-conserved, thereby making an impact not only on the background cosmological evolution but also on the perturbative spectrum of the local inhomogeneities. In order to estimate the effect on the growth of the linear matter perturbations, with the least possible alteration of the standard parametric form of the growth factor, we resort to a suitable Taylor expansion of the corresponding exponent, known as the growth index, about the value of the cosmic scale factor at the present epoch. In particular, we obtain an appropriate fitting formula for the growth index in terms of the coupling function and the matter density parameter. While the overall parametric formulation of the growth factor is found to fit well with the latest redshift-space-distortion (RSD) and the observational Hubble (OH) data at low redshifts, the fitting formula enables us to constrain the growth index to well within the concordant cosmological limits, thus ensuring the viability of the formalism.
We extend the basic formalism of mimetic-metric-torsion gravity theory, in a way that the mimetic scalar field can manifest itself geometrically as the source of not only the trace mode of torsion, but also its axial (or, pseudo-trace) mode. Specifically, we consider the mimetic field to be (i) coupled explicitly to the well-known Holst extension of the Riemann-Cartan action, and (ii) identified with the square of the associated Barbero-Immirzi field, which is presumed to be a pseudo-scalar. The conformal symmetry originally prevalent in the theory would still hold, as the associated Cartan transformations do not affect the torsion pseudo-trace, and hence the Holst term. Demanding the theory to preserve the spatial parity symmetry as well, we focus on a geometric unification of the cosmological dark sector, and show that a super-accelerating regime in the course of evolution of the universe is always feasible. From the observational perspective, assuming the cosmological evolution profile to be very close to that for $\L$CDM, we further show that there could be a smooth crossing of the so-called phantom barrier at a low red-shift, however for a very restricted parametric domain. The extent of the super-acceleration have subsequently been ascertained by examining the evolution of the relevant torsion parameters.
We generalize the basic theory of mimetic gravity by extending its purview to the general metric-compatible geometries that admit torsion, in addition to curvature. This essentially implies reinstating the mimetic principle of isolating the conformal degree of freedom of gravity in presence of torsion, by parametrizing both the physical metric and torsion in terms of the scalar `mimetic' field and the metric and torsion of a fiducial space. We assert the requisite torsion parametrization from an inspection of the fiducial space Cartan transformation which, together with the conformal transformation of the fiducial metric, preserve the physical metric and torsion. In formulating the scalar-tensor equivalent Lagrangian, we consider an explicit contact coupling of the mimetic field with torsion, so that the former can manifest itself geometrically as the source of a torsion mode, and most importantly, give rise to a viable `dark universe' picture from a mimicry of an evolving dust-like cosmological fluid with a non-zero pressure. A further consideration of higher derivatives of the mimetic field in the Lagrangian leads to physical bounds on the mimetic-torsion coupling strength, which we determine explicitly.
We look into the general aspects of space-time symmetries in presence of torsion, and how the latter is affected by such symmetries. Focusing in particular to space-times which either exhibit maximal symmetry on their own, or could be decomposed to maximally symmetric subspaces, we work out the constraints on torsion in two different theoretical schemes. We show that at least for a completely antisymmetric torsion tensor (for e.g. the one motivated from string theory), an equivalence is set between these two schemes, as the non-vanishing independent torsion tensor components turn out to be the same.
We study the dynamical aspects of dark energy in the context of a non-minimally coupled scalar field with curvature and torsion. Whereas the scalar field acts as the source of the trace mode of torsion, a suitable constraint on the torsion pseudo-trace provides a mass term for the scalar field in the effective action. In the equivalent scalar-tensor framework, we find explicit cosmological solutions representing dark energy in both Einstein and Jordan frames. We demand the dynamical evolution of the dark energy to be weak enough, so that the present-day values of the cosmological parameters could be estimated keeping them within the confidence limits set for the standard $Ł$CDM model from recent observations. For such estimates, we examine the variations of the effective matter density and the dark energy equation of state parameters over different redshift ranges. In spite of being weakly dynamic, the dark energy component differs significantly from the cosmological constant, both in characteristics and features, for e.g. it interacts with the cosmological (dust) fluid in the Einstein frame, and crosses the phantom barrier in the Jordan frame. We also obtain the upper bounds on the torsion mode parameters and the lower bound on the effective Brans-Dicke parameter. The latter turns out to be fairly large, and in agreement with the local gravity constraints, which therefore come in support of our analysis.
We study the phase space dynamics of cosmological models in the theoretical formulations of non-minimal metric-torsion couplings with a scalar field, and investigate in particular the critical points which yield stable solutions exhibiting cosmic acceleration driven by the {\em dark energy}. The latter is defined in a way that it effectively has no direct interaction with the cosmological fluid, although in an equivalent scalar-tensor cosmological setup the scalar field interacts with the fluid (which we consider to be the pressureless dust). Determining the conditions for the existence of the stable critical points we check their physical viability, in both Einstein and Jordan frames. We also verify that in either of these frames, the evolution of the universe at the corresponding stable points matches with that given by the respective exact solutions we have found in an earlier work (arXiv: 1611.00654 [gr-qc]). We not only examine the regions of physical relevance for the trajectories in the phase space when the coupling parameter is varied, but also demonstrate the evolution profiles of the cosmological parameters of interest along fiducial trajectories in the effectively non-interacting scenarios, in both Einstein and Jordan frames.