arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Valerio Faraoni.
We study the prescriptions for the coupling constant of a scalar field to the Ricci curvature of spacetime in specific gravity and scalar field theories. The results are applied to the most popular inflationary scenarios of the universe; their theoretical consistency and certain observational constraints are discussed.
It is proved that the field of a gravitational lens induces no rotation in the polarization vector of electromagnetic radiation, in agreement with the previous literature, but with a different approach. The result is generalized to the case of less conventional gravitational lenses (static cosmic strings and gravitational waves).
The tail problem for the propagation of a scalar field is considered in a cosmological background, taking a Robertson-Walker spacetime as a specific example. The explicit radial dependence of the general solution of the Klein-Gordon equation with nonminimal coupling is derived, and the inapplicability of the standard calculation of the reflection and transmission coefficients to the study of scattering of waves by the cosmological curvature is discussed.
We apply Perlick's (1990a) rigorous formulation of the Fermat principle in arbitrary spacetimes to prove the correctness of the description of gravitational lensing by gravitational waves, given in the literature using the scalar and vector formalisms. We obtain an expression for the time delay due to such nonstationary lenses; the advantage over previous papers is that Perlick's formulation of the Fermat principle is very rigorous and more suitable for practical calculations in some cases. It is also shown that ordinary moving gravitational lenses must be considered as a stationary case.