Joint cosmology seminar of Harvard/MIT/Tufts

[Kentaro Nagamine <knagamin cfa harvard edu>]

Joint Cosmology Seminar of Harvard/MIT/Tufts

Markus Luty (Maryland)

Ghost Condensation and Consistent IR Modification of General Relativity

This talk will describe the physics of a "ghost condensate", a new kind
of cosmological fluid that can fill the universe and give rise to novel
gravitational effects. The fluid has a preferred rest frame, but is
nonetheless compatible with maximally symmetric background such as flat
space or de Sitter. In these backgrounds, gravity is modified in a
nontrivial way at large distances and late times. New phenomena include
new contributions to dark energy and dark matter, antigravity, new
spin-dependent forces, and oscillatory potentials. All of this new
physics can be described by a completely explicit and consistent
effective field theory.

The seminar will be held in the Gilman room in Agassiz house, Radcliffe
Institute (at the corner of Mason and Garden St. 10 min walk from CfA) at
2:30pm.