A Model for Cosmic Self-Acceleration

Abstract

We discuss a model which gives rise to cosmic self-acceleration due to modified gravity. Improvements introduced by this approach are the following: In the coordinate system commonly used, the metric does not grow in the bulk, and no negative mass states are expected to appear. The spectrum of small perturbations contains a localized massless tensor mode, but does not admit dangerous localized massive gravitons. All the massive spin-2 modes are continuum states. The action of the model, which is an extension of DGP, allows to relax the previously known constraint on the bulk fundamental scale of gravity. The latter can take any value below the 4D Planck mass.