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We examine the cosmological sector of a gauge theory of gravity based on the SO(4,2) conformal group of Minkowski space. We allow for conventional matter coupled to the spacetime metric as well as matter coupled to the field that gauges special conformal transformations. An effective cosmological constant is generated dynamically via solution of the equations of motion, and this allows us to recover the late time acceleration of the universe. Furthermore, gravitational fields sourced by ordinary cosmological matter (i.e. dust and radiation) are significantly weakened in the very early universe, which has the effect of replacing the big bang with a big bounce. Finally, we find that this bounce is followed by a period of nearly-exponential slow roll inflation that can last long enough to explain the large scale homogeneity of the cosmic microwave background., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, references added, version matches the one published in PRD

We study general relativity with pressureless dust in the canonical formulation, with the dust field chosen as a matter-time gauge. The resulting theory has three physical degrees of freedom in the metric field. The linearized canonical theory reveals two graviton modes and a scalar mode. We find that the graviton modes remain Lorentz covariant despite the time gauge, and that the scalar mode is ultralocal. We discuss also a modification of the theory to include a parameter in the Hamiltonian analogous to that in Horava-Lifshitz models. In this case the scalar mode is no longer ultralocal, and acquires a propagation speed dependent on the deformation parameter., Comment: 10 pages (references added)

Three-dimensional gravity coupled to pressureless dust is a field theory with one local degree of freedom. In the canonical framework, the dust-time gauge encodes this physical degree of freedom as a metric function. We find that the dynamics of this field, up to spatial diffeomorphism flow, is independent of spatial derivatives and is therefore ultralocal. We also derive the linearized equations about flat spacetime, and show that the physical degree of freedom may be viewed as either a traceless or a transverse mode., Comment: 7 pages, v2 has expanded section on gauge fixing

We reconsider a gauge theory of gravity in which the gauge group is the conformal group SO(4,2) and the action is of the Yang-Mills form, quadratic in the curvature. The resulting gravitational theory exhibits local conformal symmetry and reduces to Weyl-squared gravity under certain conditions. When the theory is linearized about flat spacetime, we find that matter which couples to the generators of special conformal transformations reproduces Newton's inverse square law. Conversely, matter which couples to generators of translations induces a constant and possibly repulsive force far from the source, which may be relevant for explaining the late time acceleration of the universe. The coupling constant of theory is dimensionless, which means that it is potentially renormalizable., Comment: 7 pages. Expanded presentation and some changes of notation. Matches version published in PRD

We study the effects of exotic kinetic terms on parametric resonance during the preheating epoch of the early universe. Specifically, we consider modifications to the action of ordinary matter fields motivated by generalized uncertainty principles, polymer quantization, as well as Dirac-Born-Infeld and k-essence models. To leading order in an "exotic physics" scale, the equations of motion derived from each of these models have the same algebraic form involving a nonlinear self-interaction in the matter sector. Neglecting spatial dependence, we show that the nonlinearity effectively shuts down the parametric resonance after a finite time period. We find numeric evidence that the frustration of parametric resonance persists to spatially inhomogenous matter in $(1+1)$--dimensions., Comment: 19+1 pages. 6 figures

We re-examine vacuum polarisation of a scalar field in a quasi-local volume including the horizon. We find that Hawking radiation rate is derived as a pure decay of vacuum due to scalar field interaction with classical gravity exactly in the same way as the origin of vacuum polarisation effect in Electrodynamics., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures