Brans-Dicke-type theories and avoidance of the cosmological singularity

Abstract

We tudy flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology in Brans-Dicke-type theories of gravitation with minimal coupling between the scalar field and the matter fields in the Einstein frame (general relativity with an extra scalar field) for arbitrary values of the Brans-Dicke parameter $\omega >-3/2$. It is shown that the cosmological singularity occuring in the Einstein frame formulation of this theory is removed in the Jordan frame in the range $-3/2<\omega <\le -4/3$. This result is interpreted in the ligth of a viewpoint (first presented in reference gr-qc/9905071) asserting that both Jordan frame and Einstein frame formulations of general relativity are physically equivalent. The implications of the obtained result for string theory are outlined.

9 pages, LaTeX, no figures. Improved version accepted for publication in PRD

References in corpus (9)

• String Solitons
• A time varying speed of light as a solution to cosmological puzzles
• On Physical Equivalence between Nonlinear Gravity Theories
• The omega-tends-to-infinity limit of Brans-Dicke theory
• Dual geometries and spacetime singularities
• Superconducting cosmic string in Brans-Dicke theory
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• Scalar-Tensor Theories and Quantum Gravity
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• New varying speed of light theories
• The (pseudo)issue of the conformal frame revisited
• Covariant and locally Lorentz-invariant varying speed of light theories
• Selected topics in scalar-tensor theories and beyond
• General Relativity and Weyl Geometry
• The conformal transformation's controversy: what are we missing?
• Non-singular Brans-Dicke cosmology with cosmological constant
• On Traversable Lorentzian Wormholes in the Vacuum Low Energy Effective String Theory in Einstein and Jordan Frames
• Singularities in scalar-tensor gravity
• Rippled Cosmological Dark Matter from Damped Oscillating Newton Constant
• A Nonsingular Brans Wormhole: An Analogue to Naked Black Holes