Infrared Modification of Gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores large-distance modifications of gravity, their observational consequences, and how non-linear solutions can reconcile these theories with existing gravitational tests, especially at cosmological scales.

Contribution

It provides a general analysis of gravity modifications at large distances, emphasizing the role of non-linear solutions in maintaining consistency with observations.

Findings

Modified gravity theories can produce self-accelerated cosmological expansion.

Naive perturbative approaches break down due to singular couplings.

Resummed non-linear solutions remain valid after UV completion.

Abstract

In this lecture I address the issue of possible large distance modification of gravity and its observational consequences. Although, for the illustrative purposes we focus on a particular simple generally-covariant example, our conclusions are rather general and apply to large class of theories in which, already at the Newtonian level, gravity changes the regime at a certain very large crossover distance $r_c$. In such theories the cosmological evolution gets dramatically modified at the crossover scale, usually exhibiting a "self-accelerated" expansion, which can be differentiated from more conventional "dark energy" scenarios by precision cosmology. However, unlike the latter scenarios, theories of modified-gravity are extremely constrained (and potentially testable) by the precision gravitational measurements at much shorter scales. Despite the presence of extra polarizations of graviton, the theory is compatible with observations, since the naive perturbative expansion in Newton's constant breaks down at a certain intermediate scale. This happens because the extra polarizations have couplings singular in $1/r_c$. However, the correctly resummed non-linear solutions are regular and exhibit continuous Einsteinian limit. Contrary to the naive expectation, explicit examples indicate that the resummed solutions remain valid after the ultraviolet completion of the theory, with the loop corrections taken into account.