Inflation, bifurcations of nonlinear curvature Lagrangians and dark energy

Abstract

A possible equivalence of scalar dark matter, the inflaton, and modified gravity is analyzed. After a conformal mapping, the dependence of the effective Lagrangian on the curvature is not only singular but also bifurcates into several almost Einsteinian spaces, distinguished only by a different effective gravitational strength and cosmological constant. A swallow tail catastrophe in the bifurcation set indicates the possibility for the coexistence of different Einsteinian domains in our Universe. This `triple unification' may shed new light on the nature and large scale distribution not only of dark matter but also on `dark energy', regarded as an effective cosmological constant, and inflation.