One of the exact solutions of f(R) theories of gravity in the presence of different forms of matter exactly mimics the ΛCDM solution of general relativity (GR) at the background level. In this work we study the evolution of scalar cosmological perturbations in the covariant and gauge-invariant formalism and show that although the background in such a model is indistinguishable from the standard ΛCDM cosmology, this degeneracy is broken at the level of first-order perturbations. This is done by predicting different rates of structure formation in ΛCDM and the f(R) model both in the complete and quasi-static regimes.
Supersymmetric hybrid inflation: Explaining the spectrum of cosmological perturbations through a multiple-stage inflationary model
