We present a new class of nonsingular bounce cosmology free from instabilities, using a single scalar field coupled to gravity within the framework of the Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor (DHOST) theories. In this type of scenarios, the gradient instability that widely exists in nonsingular bounce cosmologies in the framework of scalar-tensor and Horndeski/Galileon theories is removed by the effects of new operators introduced by the DHOST, due to the modification that they later bring about to the dispersion relation of perturbations. Hence, our results demonstrate that there is indeed a loophole for this type of bounce scenarios to be free from pathologies when primordial perturbations evolve through the bounce phase, and thus the theoretical no-go theorem for nonsingular bounce cosmology of Horndeski/Galileon theories can be delicately evaded in DHOST extensions.

In this article, we present an emergent universe scenario that can be derived from DHOST cosmology. The universe starts asymptotically Minkowski in the far past just like the regular Galileon Genesis, but evolves to a radiation dominated period at the late stage, and therefore, the universe has a graceful exit which is absent in the regular Galileon Genesis. We analyze the behavior of cosmological perturbations and show that both the scalar and tensor modes are free from the gradient instability problem. We further analyze the primordial scalar spectrum generated in various situations and discuss whether a scale invariance can be achieved.

We investigate the bounce realization in the framework of DHOST cosmology, focusing on the relation with observables. We perform a detailed analysis of the scalar and tensor perturbations during the Ekpyrotic contraction phase, the bounce phase, and the fast-roll expansion phase, calculating the power spectra, the spectral indices and the tensor-to-scalar ratio. Furthermore, we study the initial conditions, incorporating perturbations generated by Ekpyrotic vacuum fluctuations, by matter vacuum fluctuations, and by thermal fluctuations. The scale invariance of the scalar power spectrum can be acquired introducing a matter contraction phase before the Ekpyrotic phase, or invoking a thermal gas as the source. The DHOST bounce scenario with cosmological perturbations generated by thermal fluctuations proves to be the most efficient one, and the corresponding predictions are in perfect agreement with observational bounds. Especially the tensor-to-scalar ratio is many orders of magnitude within the allowed region, since it is suppressed by the Hubble parameter at the beginning of the bounce phase.

We investigate the role of bulk viscous pressure on the warm inflationary modified Chaplygin gas in brane-world framework in the presence of standard scalar field. We assume the intermediate inflationary scenario in strong dissipative regime and constructed the inflaton, potential, entropy density, slow-roll parameters, scalar and tensor power spectra, scalar spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio. We develop various trajectories such as n s − N , n s − r and n s − α s (where n s is the spectral index, α s is the running of spectral index, N is the number of e-folds and r is tensor-to-scalar ratio) for variable as well as constant dissipation and bulk viscous coefficients at high dissipative regime. It is interesting to remark here that our results of these parameters are compatible with recent observational data such as WMAP 7 + 9, BICEP2 and Planck data.

We calculate the quasinormal modes (QNM) frequencies of a test massless scalar field around static black holes in f (T ) gravity. Focusing on quadratic f (T ) modifications, which is a good approximation for every realistic f (T ) theory, we first extract the spherically symmetric solutions using the perturbative method, imposing two ansätze for the metric functions, which suitably quantify the deviation from the Schwarzschild solution. Moreover, we extract the effective potential and then we calculate the QNM frequency of the obtained solutions. Firstly, we solve the Schrödinger-like equation numerically using the discretization method, and we extract the frequency and the time evolution of the dominant mode applying the function fit method. Secondly, we perform a semianalytical calculation by applying the third-order WKB approximation method. We show that the results for f (T ) gravity are different comparing to General Relativity, and in particular we obtain a different slope and period of the field decay behavior for different values of the model parameter. Hence, under the light of gravitational-wave observations of increasing accuracy from binary systems, the whole analysis could be used as an additional tool in order to test General Relativity and examine whether torsional gravitational modifications are possible.