Cosmic Acceleration and the notion of Alternative Vacuum in Nash Theory

Abstract

We argue that Nash theory, a quadratic theory of Gravity, can describe a late-time cosmic acceleration without any exotic matter or cosmological constant. The observational viability of an exact cosmological solution of Nash theory is adjudged using a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation and JLA+OHD+BAO data sets. Departures from standard ΛCDM cosmology are noted and analyzed. We prove that the Nash vacuum dynamics is equivalent to the dynamics of an Einstein vacuum plus a self-interacting Higgs scalar field, only if a mild evolution of the Higgs Vacuum Expectation Value is allowed. This leads to variations in the mass scales of fundamental particles and the fine structure constant. The variations are found to fit nicely with the analysis of molecular absorption spectra from a series of Quasars.