Instability of Nonsingular Black Holes in Nonlinear Electrodynamics.

We show that nonsingular black holes realized in nonlinear electrodynamics are always prone to Laplacian instability around the center because of a negative squared sound speed in the angular direction. This is the case for both electric and magnetic BHs, where the instability of one of the vector-field perturbations leads to enhancing a dynamical gravitational perturbation in the even-parity sector. Thus, the background regular metric is no longer maintained in a steady state.

Observational constraints on loop quantum cosmology.

In the inflationary scenario of loop quantum cosmology in the presence of inverse-volume corrections, we give analytic formulas for the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations convenient to compare with observations. Since inverse-volume corrections can provide strong contributions to the running spectral indices, inclusion of terms higher than the second-order runnings in the power spectra is crucially important. Using the recent data of cosmic microwave background and other cosmological experiments, we place bounds on the quantum corrections.

Cosmology of a covariant Galilean field.

We study the cosmology of a covariant scalar field respecting a Galilean symmetry in flat space-time. We show the existence of a tracker solution that finally approaches a de Sitter fixed point responsible for cosmic acceleration today. The viable region of model parameters is clarified by deriving conditions under which ghosts and Laplacian instabilities of scalar and tensor perturbations are absent.

() Theories.

Over the past decade, () theories have been extensively studied as one of the simplest modifications to General Relativity. In this article we review various applications of () theories to cosmology and gravity - such as inflation, dark energy, local gravity constraints, cosmological perturbations, and spherically symmetric solutions in weak and strong gravitational backgrounds. We present a number of ways to distinguish those theories from General Relativity observationally and experimentally.

Are f(R) dark energy models cosmologically viable?

All f(R) modified gravity theories are conformally identical to models of quintessence in which matter is coupled to dark energy with a strong coupling. This coupling induces a cosmological evolution radically different from standard cosmology. We find that, in all f(R) theories where a power of R is dominant at large or small R (which include most of those proposed so far in the literature), the scale factor during the matter phase grows as t(1/2) instead of the standard law t(2/3).