Eur. Phys. J. C (2019) 79: 287
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6802-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Strength of singularities in varying constants theories

¹ Chair of Physics, Maritime University, Wały Chrobrego 1-2, 70-500, Szczecin, Poland
² Institute of Physics, University of Szczecin, Wielkopolska 15, 70-451, Szczecin, Poland
³ Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Sławkowska 17, 31-016, Kraków, Poland

^* e-mail: adam.balcerzak@usz.edu.pl

Received: 9 November 2018
Accepted: 20 March 2019
Published online: 28 March 2019

Abstract

In this paper we consider a specific type of the bimetric theory of gravitation with the two different metrics introduced in the cosmological frame. Both metrics respect all the symmetries of the standard FLRW solution and contain conformally related spatial parts. One of the metric is assumed to describe the causal structure for the matter. Another metric defines the causal structure for the gravitational interactions. A crucial point is that the spatial part of the metric describing gravity is given by the spatial part of the matter metric conformally rescaled by a time-dependent factor which, as it turns out, can be linked to the effective gravitational constant and the effective speed of light. In the context of such a bimetric framework we examine the strength of some singular cosmological scenarios in the sense of the criteria introduced by Tipler and Królak. In particular, we show that for the nonsingular scale factor associated with the matter metric, both the vanishing or blowing up of the factor for some particular moment of the cosmic expansion may lead to a strong singularity with infinite value of the energy density and infinite value of the pressure.