A generic feature of viable F (R) gravity is investigated: It is demonstrated that during the matter dominated era the large frequency oscillations of the effective dark energy may influence the behavior of higher derivatives of the Hubble parameter with the risk to produce some singular unphysical solutions at high redshift. This behavior is explicitly analyzed for realistic F (R) models, in particular, exponential gravity and a power form model. To stabilize such oscillations, we consider the additional modification of the models via a correction term which does not destroy the viability properties. A detailed analysis on the future evolution of the universe and the evolution history of the growth index of the matter density perturbations are performed. Furthermore, we explore two applications of exponential gravity to the inflationary scenario. We show how it is possible to obtain different numbers of e-folds during the early-time acceleration by making different choices of the model parameters in the presence of ultrarelativistic matter, which destabilizes inflation and eventually leads to the exit from the inflationary stage. We execute the numerical analysis of inflation in two viable exponential gravity models. It is proved that at the end of the inflation, the effective energy density and curvature of the universe decrease and thus a unified description between inflation and the ΛCDM-like dark energy dominated era can be realized.

We discuss in detail the weak field limit of f(R, 𝒢) gravity taking into account analytic functions of the Ricci scalar R and the Gauss–Bonnet invariant 𝒢. Specifically, we develop, in metric formalism, the Newtonian, Post-Newtonian (PN) and Parametrized Post-Newtonian (PPN) limits starting from general f(R, 𝒢) Lagrangian. The special cases of f(R) and f(𝒢) gravities are considered. In the case of the Newtonian limit of f(R, 𝒢) gravity, a general solution in terms of Green's functions is achieved.