| Abstract: |
Recently, a new class of effective scalar field theories, with properties potentially interesting for cosmology, have emerged from attempts to modify gravity. I will discuss these "Galileon" field theories, emphasizing how they may be derived from the probe brane construction, and using this to generalize them to their associated curved-background and multi-field incarnations. I will comment on issues of stability, non-renormalization, coupling to gravity, and cosmological applications, and conclude by sketching how such terms can be constructed as Wess-Zumino terms of a particular type. |
