GRAVITY-DRIVEN ACCELERATION OF THE COSMIC EXPANSION

It is shown here that a dynamical Planck mass can drive the scale factor of the Universe to accelerate. The negative pressure which drives the cosmic acceleration is identified with the unusual kinetic energy density of the Planck field. No potential or cosmological constant is required. This suggests a purely gravity-driven, kinetic inflation. Although the possibility is not ruled out, the burst of acceleration is often too weak to address the initial condition problems of cosmology. To illustrate the kinetic acceleration, three different cosmologies are presented. One such example, that of a bouncing Universe, hints of being nonsingular. The acceleration is also considered in the conformally related Einstein frame in which the Planck mass is constant. © 1995 The American Physical Society.