THERMODYNAMICS IN MODIFIED GRAVITY THEORIES

We demonstrate that there exists an equilibrium description of thermodynamics on the apparent horizon in the expanding cosmological background for a wide class of modified gravity theories with the Lagrangian density f(R,phi,X), where R is the Ricci scalar and X is the kinetic energy of a scalar field phi. This comes from a suitable definition of an energy momentum tensor of the dark component obeying the local energy conservation law in the Jordan frame. It is shown that the equilibrium description in terms of the horizon entropy S is convenient because it takes into account the contribution of the horizon entropy (S) over cap S in non-equilibrium thermodynamics as well as an entropy production term.