The force of gravity from a Lagrangian containing inverse powers of the Ricci scalar (Q1431731)

The paper concerns the response to a diffuse spherical matter source after the epoch of acceleration has set in. The procedure will be to solve for the perturbed Ricci scalar, whence we determine the gravitational force carried by the trace of the metric perturbation. The authors: (a) constrain the matter distribution to have the property that its rate of gravitational collapse is identical to the rate of spacetime expansion, thereby fixing the physical radius of the distribution to a constant value; (b) impose the condition that inside the matter distribution the density is low enough to justifiably employ a locally de Sitter background, in which case the Ricci scalar can be solved exactly and remains constant.