Phenomenological Signatures of Quadratic Gravity

The quantum motivation of the inclusion of quadratic terms suggests that the actual variations from General Relativity should be relevant only at extremely small scales, and the results of the previous chapters, in particular the one made in the case of compact stars in Sect. 5.4 , confirm this suggestion. Most of the work of this thesis is then relevant mainly at the theoretical level, specifically in understanding how much physical sense can have quadratic gravity. Nonetheless, we would like to conclude this thesis by giving a flavor of the possible phenomenological impact of quadratic terms in astrophysical solutions. While with sensible parameters the predicted values of the variations from General Relativity are below any possible desirable sensibility of present experiments, we still believe that it remains interesting to study the possible phenomenological effects of quadratic gravity as a way of imagining test of falsifiability of General Relativity, and maybe also some test of other modified theory of gravity with different origins.