Paper detail

Some cosmological and astrophysical aspects of modified gravity theories

This thesis will try to contribute to the understanding of open issues in cosmology by considering f(R) and brane-world theories. In Chapter 1, we shall summarize the main features of f(R) gravities in the metric formalism and we shall introduce both the notion of brane excitations, the branons, and the brane-skyrmions. We shall finish the chapter by providing some insight about the possibility of mini black holes detection in the LHC as a signature for the validity of these modified gravity theories. The Chapter 2 will deal with f(R) theories able to mimic Einstein-Hilbert plus cosmological constant solutions and f(R) theories will be shown to be able to mimic the cosmological evolution generated by any perfect fluid with constant equation of state. The Chapter 3 will be devoted to the computation of cosmological perturbations for f(R) theories. Special attention will be paid here to obtain a completely general differential equation for the evolution of perturbations and its particularization for the so-called sub-Hubble scales will be explicitly shown. In the Chapter 4 we shall focus on the study of black holes in f(R) gravities in an arbitrary number of dimensions. With this purpose we shall study constant curvature solutions for f(R) theories as well as perturbative solutions around the standard SAdS geometry. An important part of this chapter will be then devoted to the thermodynamics of SAdS black holes in f(R) theories. In the Chapter 5 we will thoroughly study brane-skyrmions. In this context, the recent claim of detection of an unexpected feature in the CMB, referred to as the cold spot, will be explained as a topological defect on the brane in complete agreement with those calculations in the literature that tried to explain that cold spot as a texture of a NLSM. Main conclusions are summarized all together in Chapter 6 .