Download or read book Quadratic Scalar-tensor Gravity written by Trevor Bamidelé Davies and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In cosmology, the same framework was applied to a generic Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe involving general metric coupling and scalar potential functions. We developed a mechanism which allowed the scalar field to be dynamically trapped, thus generating a potential capable of driving primordial inflation. Our results show that a trapped scalar field produces non-trivial dynamical consequences when applied to standard cosmology. Additionally, our analytic solutions for the generic inflationary behaviour, produce acceptable duration and e-foldings, thus recovering the Hubble parameter which is consistent with the present-day value. A feature of our cosmological model is that the universe can undergo several accelerating or decelerating phases, even though the scalar potential and metric coupling are monotonic functions overall. As this is important for the current dark energy problem, the quasi-static motion of the gravitational field induced by the scalar potential in the early universe, is investigated for a small value of the scalar field with normalized metric at the present time. Our results show that a variable Lambda Cold Dark Matter universe emerges naturally from the quadratic model.