Testing f(R) cosmologies with atoms

por Gonzalo Olmo Alba (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

viernes 27 abr. 2007 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios (Dpto. de Física Teórica (UVEG))

We study the effects that the gravitational interaction of f(R) theories of gravity in Palatini formalism has on the stationary states of the Hydrogen atom. We show that the role of gravity in this system is very important for lagrangians f(R) with terms that grow at low curvatures, which have been proposed to explain the accelerated expansion rate of the universe. In fact, new gravitationally induced terms in the Hamiltonian generate a number of instabilities that are incompatible with the very existence of bound states. The universe that we observe is, therefore, incompatible with that kind of gravitational interaction. For lagrangians with corrections at high curvatures, the well-known stationary solutions are estable though other problems may arise at the quantum level.