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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 3: Alternative theories of gravity and general formalism

GR 3.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 17:10–17:30, NW-Bau - HS3

Generalized scalar-torsion theories of gravity — •Manuel Hohmann — Universität Tartu, Tartu, Estland

Teleparallel gravity theories, which attribute gravity to the torsion of spacetime instead of curvature, have gained growing attention in the last years, in particular due to their recently developed Lorentz covariant formulation. The fundamental fields of these theories are a tetrad and a flat spin connection. A straightforward extension to teleparallel gravity, which provides for possible explanations for the observed accelerating phases in cosmology, is obtained by coupling one or several scalar fields to torsion. Here we discuss the properties of a general class of such scalar-torsion theories. We show how local Lorentz invariance is naturally achieved through their covariant formulation, and study a class of theories which is invariant under conformal transformations of the tetrad field. We also discuss the resulting cosmological dynamics.