The Cosmology of a Universe with Spontaneously-Broken Lorentz Symmetry

Abstract

A self consistent effective field theory of modified gravity has recently been proposed with spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz invariance. The symmetry is broken by a vector field with the wrong-sign mass term and it has been shown to have additional graviton modes and modified dispersion relations. In this paper we study the evolution of a homogeneous and isotropic universe in the presence of such a vector field with a minimum lying along the time-like direction. A plethora of different regimes is identified, such as accelerated expansion, loitering, collapse and tracking.