Global asymptotic dynamics of Cosmological Einsteinian Cubic Gravity

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the cosmological dynamics of an up to cubic curvature correction to General Relativity (GR) known as Cosmological Einsteinian Cubic Gravity (CECG), whose vacuum spectrum consists of the graviton exclusively and its cosmology is well-posed as an initial value problem. We are able to uncover the global asymptotic structure of the phase space of this theory. It is revealed that an inflationary matter-dominated bigbang is the global past attractor which means that inflation is the starting point of any physically meaningful cosmic history. Given that higher order curvature corrections to GR are assumed to influence the cosmological dynamics at early times -- high energies/large curvature limit -- the late-time inflation can not be a consequence of the up to cubic order curvature modifications. We confirm this assumption by showing that late-time acceleration of the expansion in the CECG model is possible only if add a cosmological constant term.