We consider the dilaton in the strong string-coupling limit and elaborate on the original idea of Damour and Polyakov whereby the dilaton coupling to matter is minimized and vanishes at a finite value of the dilaton field. Combining this type of coupling with an exponential potential, the effective potential of the dilaton becomes matter density dependent. We study the background cosmology, showing that the dilaton can play the role of dark energy. We also analyze the constraints imposed by the absence of violation of the equivalence principle. Imposing these constraints and assuming that the dilaton plays the role of dark energy, we consider the consequences of the dilaton on large scale structures and, in particular, the behavior of the slip functions and the growth index at low redshift.

We analyze the PVLAS results using a chameleon field whose properties depend on the environment. We find that, assuming a runaway bare potential $V(\varphi )$ and a universal coupling to matter, the chameleon potential is such that the scalar field can act as dark energy. Moreover, the chameleon-field model is compatible with the CERN Axion Solar Telescope results, fifth-force experiments, and cosmology.

The effects of mass-varying neutrinos on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and large scale structures (LSS) are studied. In these models, dark energy and neutrinos are coupled such that the neutrino masses are functions of the scalar field playing the role of dark energy. We begin by describing the cosmological background evolution of such a system. It is pointed out that, similar to models with a dark matter/dark energy interaction, the apparent equation of state measured with SNIa can be smaller than $-1$. We then discuss the effect of mass-varying neutrinos on the CMB anisotropies and the matter power spectrum. A suppression of power in the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales is usually observed. We give an explanation for this behavior and discuss different couplings and quintessence potentials to show the generality of the results obtained. We perform a likelihood analysis using wide-ranging SNIa, CMB, and LSS observations to assess whether such theories are viable. Treating the neutrino mass as a free parameter we find that the constraints on the coupling are weak, since CMB and LSS surveys give only upper bounds on the neutrino mass. However, fixing a priori the neutrino masses, we find that there is some evidence that the existence of such a coupling is actually preferred by current cosmological data over the standard $\Lambda \mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology.

We consider a cosmology in which dark matter and a quintessence scalar field responsible for the acceleration of the Universe are allowed to interact. Allowing for both conformal and disformal couplings, we perform a global analysis of the constraints on our model using Hubble parameter measurements, baryon acoustic oscillation distance measurements, and a Supernovae Type Ia data set. We find that the additional disformal coupling relaxes the conformal coupling constraints. Moreover, we show that, at the background level, a disformal interaction within the dark sector is preferred to both $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ and uncoupled quintessence, hence favoring interacting dark energy.

We have studied the nonlinear structure formation of the environmentally dependent dilaton model using N-body simulations. We find that the mechanism of suppressing the scalar fifth force in high-density regions works very well. Within the parameter space allowed by the solar-system tests, the dilaton model predicts small deviations of the matter power spectrum and the mass function from their $\Lambda${}CDM counterparts. The importance of taking full account of the nonlinearity of the model is also emphasized.

We consider a modified gravity theory, $f(R)=R-a/R^n+b{R}^m$, in the metric formulation, which has been suggested to produce late-time acceleration in the Universe, while satisfying local fifth-force constraints. We investigate the parameter range for this theory, considering the regimes of early and late-time acceleration, big bang nucleosynthesis, and fifth-force constraints. We conclude that it is difficult to find a unique range of parameters for consistency of this theory.