Conformal frames in cosmology

Abstract

From higher dimensional theories, e.g. string theory, one expects the presence of nonminimally coupled scalar fields. We review the notion of conformal frames in cosmology and emphasize their physical equivalence, which holds at least at a classical level. Furthermore, if there is a field, or fields, which dominates the universe, as it is often the case in cosmology, we can use such notion of frames to treat our system, matter and gravity, as two different sectors. On one hand, the gravity sector which describes the dynamics of the geometry and on the other hand, the matter sector which has such geometry as a playground. We use this interpretation to build a model where the fact that a curvaton couples to a particular frame metric could leave an imprint in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

Publication
International Journal of Modern Physics D
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Guillem Domènech
Researcher in gravity and cosmology

I am an Emmy Noether Research Group Leader at the Insitute for Theoretical Physics at the Leibniz University Hannover. My research focuses in various aspects of cosmology, gravity and particle physics.