Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2004-10-20
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
12 pages 4 figures. Based on the talks delivered at Second Advanced Research Workshop, Gravity, Astrophysics, and Strings, Kit
Scientific paper
The scalar-tensor theory of gravitation has been and still is one of the most widely discussed "alternative theories" to General Relativity (GR). Despite nearly half a century of its age, it continues to attract renewed interests of not only theorists but also experimentalists when we now face such issues like the accelerating universe and possible time-variability of the fine-structure constant, both viewed as something beyond the standard GR. It appears that the theory provides realistic results sometimes even beyond what is expected from the quintessence approach aimed primarily to be more phenomenological. It seems nevertheless as if some of the unique aspects of this theory are not fully understood, even leading to occasional confusions. I try in my lectures, partly using the contents of our book (Y.F. and K. Maeda, Scalar-tensor theory of gravitation, Cambridge University Press, 2003), to discuss some of the most crucial concepts starting from elementary introduction to the theory. Particular emphases will be placed on the unique features of the nonminimal coupling term, the roles of the conformal transformations together with the choice of a physical conformal frame and the value of the coupling strength to the matter. Readers are advised to refer to the references for more details.
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