Teleparallel scalar-tensor gravity through cosmological dynamical systems

Abstract

Scalar-tensor theories offer the prospect of explaining the cosmological evolution of the Universe through an effective description of dark energy as a quantity with a non-trivial evolution. In this work, we investigate this feature of scalar-tensor theories in the teleparallel gravity context. Teleparallel gravity is a novel description of geometric gravity as a torsional-rather than curvature-based quantity which presents a new foundational base for gravity. Our investigation is centered on the impact of a nontrivial input from the kinetic term of the scalar field. We consider a number of model settings in the context of the dynamical system to reveal their evolutionary behavior. We determine the critical points of these systems and discuss their dynamics.