Aspects of non-minimally coupled curvature with power laws

Abstract

We consider a class of theories containing power-law terms in both the Ricci scalar and a scalar field, including their non-minimal couplings. As a first step, we systematically classify all non-trivial cases with a propagating scalar field that arise from the simplest general power-law formulation, which contains the minimal number of terms. We then analyze each case in detail, focusing on the structure of the degrees of freedom, by both formulating the theories in the Einstein frames and focusing on the singular points in the Jordan frame. We demonstrate that such theories can give rise to different, and sometimes unexpected structure of the modes, that can change at the leading order depending on the background.