We are considering the cosmological consequences of an induced gravity theory coupled to the minimal standard model of particle physics. The non-minimal coupling parameter between gravity and the Higgs field must then be very large, yielding some new cosmological consequences for the early Universe and new constraints on the Higgs mass. As an outcome, new inflation is only possible for very special initial conditions producing first a short contraction era after which an inflationary expansion automatically follows; a chaotic inflationary scenario is successfully achieved. The contrast of density perturbations required to explain the seed of astronomic structures are obtained for very large values of the Higgs mass (M H >> G −1/2 F ), otherwise the perturbations have a small amplitude; in any case, the spectral index of scalar perturbations agrees with the observed one.

We i n v estigate the cosmological consequences of a theory of induced gravity in which the scalar eld is identied with the Higgs eld of the rst symmetry breaking of a minimal SU(5) GUT. The mass of the X-boson determines a great value for the coupling constant of gravityparticle physics. Because of this fact, a "slow" rollover dynamics for the Higgs eld is not possible in a "new" ination scenario and, moreover, a contraction era for the scale factor in the early universe exists, after which ination follows automatically; "chaotic" ination is performed without problems. Ination is successfully achieved due to the relationship among the masses of particle physics at that scale: The Higgs-, X-boson-and Planck-masses. As a result the particle physics parameter is not ne-tuned as usual in order to predict acceptable values of re-heating temperature and density and gravitational wave perturbations. Moreover, if the coherent Higgs oscillations didn't decay they could explain the missing mass problem of cosmology.

We present a formalism to compute Lagrangian displacement fields for a wide range of cosmologies in the context of perturbation theory up to third order. We emphasize the case of theories with scale dependent gravitational strengths, such as chameleons, but our formalism can be accommodated to other modified gravity theories. In the non-linear regime two qualitative features arise. One, as is well known, is that nonlinearities lead to a screening of the force mediated by the scalar field. The second is a consequence of the transformation of the Klein-Gordon equation from Eulerian to Lagrangian coordinates, producing frame-lagging terms that are important especially at large scales, and if not considered, the theory does not reduce to the $\Lambda$CDM model in that limit. We apply our formalism to compute the 1-loop power spectrum and the correlation function in $f(R)$ gravity by using different resummation schemes. We further discuss the IR divergences of these formalisms.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. v2: CLPT scheme added, IR divergences discussed. v3: Matches published versio

Ongoing and near-future imaging-based dark energy experiments are critically dependent upon photometric redshifts (a.k.a. photo-z's): i.e., estimates of the redshifts of objects based only on flux information obtained through broad filters. Higher-quality, lower-scatter photo-z's will result in smaller random errors on cosmological parameters; while systematic errors in photometric redshift estimates, if not constrained, may dominate all other uncertainties from these experiments. The desired optimization and calibration is dependent upon spectroscopic measurements for secure redshift information; this is the key application of galaxy spectroscopy for imaging-based dark energy experiments.Hence, to achieve their full potential, imaging-based experiments will require large sets of objects with spectroscopically-determined redshifts, for two purposes:• Training: Objects with known redshift are needed to map out the relationship between object color and z (or, equivalently, to determine empirically-calibrated templates describing the restframe spectra of the full range of galaxies, which may be used to predict the color-z relation). The ultimate goal of training is to minimize each moment of the distribution of differences between photometric redshift estimates and the true redshifts of objects, making the relationship between them as tight as possible. The larger and more complete our "training set" of spectroscopic redshifts is, the smaller the RMS photo-z errors should be, increasing the constraining power of imaging experiments.Requirements: Spectroscopic redshift measurements for ∼30,000 objects over >∼15 widelyseparated regions, each at least ∼20 arcmin in diameter, and reaching the faintest objects used in a given experiment, will likely be necessary if photometric redshifts are to be trained and calibrated with conventional techniques. Larger, more complete samples (i.e., with longer exposure times) can improve photo-z algorithms and reduce scatter further, enhancing the science return from planned experiments greatly (increasing the Dark Energy Task Force figure of merit by up to ∼50%).

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In this work we extend the perturbation theory for modified gravity (MG) in two main aspects. First, the construction of matter overdensities from Lagrangian displacement fields is shown to hold in a general framework, allowing us to find Standard Perturbation Theory (SPT) kernels from known Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (LPT) kernels. We then develop a theory of biased tracers for generalized cosmologies, extending already existing formalisms for ΛCDM. We present the correlation function in Convolution-LPT and the power spectrum in SPT for ΛCDM, f (R) Hu-Sawicky, and DGP braneworld models. Our formalism can be applied to many generalized cosmologies and to facilitate it, we are making public a code to compute these statistics. We further study the relaxation of bias with the use of a simple model and of excursion set theory, showing that in general the bias parameters have smaller values in MG than in General Relativity.

This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by Einstein in 1916, theoretical and experimental blunders, efforts towards their detection, and finally the subsequent successful discovery.

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