High precision cosmological observations in last decade suggest that about 70% of our universe's energy density is in so called "Dark Energy" (DE). Observations show that DE has negative effective pressure and therefore unlike conventional energy sources accelerates the cosmic expansion instead of decelerating it. DE is highly uniform and has become a dominant component only recently.
The simplest candidate for DE is the time-independent cosmological constant $Λ$. Although successful in fitting available data, the cosmological constant model has a number of theoretical shortcomings and because of that alternative models of DE are considered. In one such scenario a cosmological scalar field that slowly rolls down its potential acts like a time-dependent cosmological constant.
I have used different independent cosmological data sets to constrain the time dependence of DE's energy density in the framework of the slowly-rolling cosmological scalar field model. Present data favors a time-independent cosmological constant, but the time-dependent DE can not be ruled out at high confidence level. Ongoing and planned cosmological probes and surveys will provide more and better quality data over the next decade. When the new data sets are available we will be able to either detect the time dependence of DE or constrain it to a very small physically uninteresting value.
One of the great endeavors of the past decade has been the evaluation of different observational techniques for measuring dark energy properties and of theoretical techniques for constraining models of cosmic acceleration given cosmological data. This chapter reviews a few of the key developments, promises, and cautions for revealing dark energy. We also present a few new calculations, on direct detection of acceleration through redshift drift, the minimum uncertainty in the equation of state, and testing gravity.
We use the measurement of gamma-ray burst (GRB) distances to constrain dark energy cosmological model parameters. We employ two methods for analyzing GRB data - fitting luminosity relation of GRBs in each cosmology and using distance measures computed from binned GRB data. Current GRB data alone cannot tightly constrain cosmological parameters and allow for a wide range of dark energy models.
The local measurement of $H_0$ is in tension with the prediction of $Λ$CDM model based on the Planck data. This tension may imply that dark energy is strengthened in the late-time Universe. We employ the latest cosmological observations on CMB, BAO, LSS, SNe, $H(z)$ and $H_0$ to constrain several interacting dark energy models. Our results show no significant indications for the interaction between dark energy and dark matter. The $H_0$ tension can be moderately alleviated, but not totally released.
Observational growth rate data had been derived from observations of redshift distortions in galaxy redshift surveys. Here we use the growth rate data to place constraints on the dark energy model parameters. By performing a joint analysis with the Type Ia supernova, baryon acoustic oscillation and cosmic microwave background data, it is found that the growth rate data are useful for improving the constraints. The joint constraints show that the $Λ$CDM model is still in good agreement with current observations, although a time-variant dark energy still cannot be ruled out. It is argued that th…
The recent observational evidence for the current cosmic acceleration have stimulated renewed interest in alternative cosmologies, such as scenarios with interaction in the dark sector (dark matter and dark energy). In general, such models contain an unknown negative-pressure dark component coupled with the pressureless dark matter and/or with the baryons that results in an evolution for the Universe rather different from the one predicted by the standard $Λ$CDM model. In this work we test the observational viability of such scenarios by using the most recent galaxy cluster gas mass fraction v…
We present a spectroscopic catalog of (mostly) red galaxies in 24 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.17 < z < 0.92 obtained with the LRIS instrument on the Keck I telescope. Here we describe the observations and the galaxy spectra, including the discovery of three cD galaxies with LINER emission spectra, and the spectroscopic discovery of four new galaxy-galaxy lenses in cluster environments.
Cosmological observations are normally fit under the assumption that the dark sector can be decomposed into dark matter and dark energy components. However, as long as the probes remain purely gravitational, there is no unique decomposition and observations can only constrain a single dark fluid; this is known as the dark degeneracy. We use observations to directly constrain this dark fluid in a model-independent way, demonstrating in particular that the data cannot be fit by a dark fluid with a single constant equation of state. Parameterizing the dark fluid equation of state by a variety of …
Dark energy affects the Hubble expansion rate (namely, the expansion history) $H(z)$ by an integral over $w(z)$. However, the usual observables are the luminosity distances or the angular diameter distances, which measure the distance-redshift relation. Actually, dark energy affects the distances (and the growth factor) by a further integration over functions of $H(z)$. Thus, the direct measurements of the Hubble parameter $H(z)$ at different redshifts are of great importance for constraining the properties of dark energy. In this paper, we show how the typical dark energy models, for example,…
We determine the conditions for which the constraints from lunar laser ranging on the time evolution of the local gravitational constant can be extrapolated to impose constraints on the time evolution of the cosmological gravitational constant in scalar-tensor theories of modified gravity. We allow for the possibility that the scalar-tensor theories are non-linear and contain a screening mechanism. This results in strong constraints on the running of the cosmological Planck mass described by the Horndeski function $|α_M|\lesssim 0.002$. We find that our assumptions are valid for most Vainshtei…
The Figure of Merit Science Working Group (FoMSWG) recently forecast the constraints on dark energy that will be achieved prior to the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) by ground-based experiments that exploit baryon acoustic oscillations, type Ia supernovae, and weak gravitational lensing. We show that cluster counts from on-going and near-future surveys should provide robust, complementary dark energy constraints. In particular, we find that optimally combined optical and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect cluster surveys should improve the Dark Energy Task Force (DETF) figure of merit for pre-JDEM pr…
We present the Hubble diagram (HD) of 66 Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) derived using only data from their X - ray afterglow lightcurve. To this end, we use the recently updated L_X - T_a correlation between the break time T_a and the X - ray luminosity L_X measured at T_a calibrated from a sample of Swift GRBs with lightcurves well fitted by the Willingale et al. (2007) model. We then investigate the use of this HD to constrain cosmological parameters when used alone or in combination with other data showing that the use of GRBs leads to constraints in agreement with previous results in literature. …
To reveal natures of the dark matter (DM) particles, a gamma-ray signal produced in annihilation processes of DM into the standard model particles has been one of the major probes. The cross-correlation between highly DM dominated structures, such as local dwarf galaxies, and observed photons in the direction of the structures, has been explored and provided stringent constraints on the annihilation rate. In our previous work, we have shown that it is sufficient to know the distance distribution of the galaxy sample and individual distance measurement is not required for constraining the annih…
The recently published analytic probability density function for the mildly non-linear cosmic density field within spherical cells is used to build a simple but accurate maximum likelihood estimate for the redshift evolution of the variance of the density, which, as expected, is shown to have smaller relative error than the sample variance. This estimator provides a competitive probe for the equation of state of dark energy, reaching a few percent accuracy on wp and wa for a Euclid-like survey. The corresponding likelihood function can take into account the configuration of the cells via their…
We examine how the properties of dark matter, parameterised by an equation of state parameter $w$ and two perturbative Generalised Dark Matter (GDM) parameters $c^2_s$ (the sound speed) and $c^2_\text{vis}$ (the viscosity), are constrained by existing cosmological data, particularly the Planck 2015 data release. We find that the GDM parameters are consistent with zero, and are strongly constrained, showing no evidence for extending the dark matter model beyond the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm. The dark matter equation of state is constrained to be within $-0.000896<w<0.00238$ at the $99.7\%…
We discuss present and future cosmological constraints on variations of the fine structure constant $α$ induced by an early dark energy component having the simplest allowed (linear) coupling to electromagnetism. We find that current cosmological data show no variation of the fine structure constant at recombination respect to the present-day value, with $α$ / $α_0$ = 0.975 \pm 0.020 at 95 % c.l., constraining the energy density in early dark energy to $Ω_e$ < 0.060 at 95 % c.l.. Moreover, we consider constraints on the parameter quantifying the strength of the coupling by the scalar field. We…
We investigate constraints on dark energy fluctuations using type Ia supernovae. If dark energy is not in the form of a cosmological constant, that is if the equation of state is not equal to -1, we expect not only temporal, but also spatial variations in the energy density. Such fluctuations would cause local variations in the universal expansion rate and directional dependences in the redshift-distance relation. We present a scheme for relating a power spectrum of dark energy fluctuations to an angular covariance function of standard candle magnitude fluctuations. The predictions for a pheno…
We consider the potential for line intensity mapping (IM) experiments to measure the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) from 3 < z < 6. This would constrain the expansion history in a redshift range that is currently unexplored. We calculate the map depths that future IM experiments targeting the CO(1-0) rotational transition line and [CII] ionized carbon fine-structure line would need to achieve in order to measure the BAO. We find that near-future IM experiments could constrain the BAO scale to 5% or better depending on CO/[CII] model amplitude. This measurement is at a precision that could …
Observational searches for large-scale vorticity modes in the late time Universe are underexplored. Within the standard $Λ$CDM model, this is well motivated given the observed properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, this means that searches for cosmic vorticity modes can serve as a powerful consistency test of our cosmological model. We show that through combining CMB measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and the moving lens effects with galaxy survey data we can constrain vorticity fields independently from the large scale cosmic velocity field. This approach ca…
The recent measurement of the global 21-cm absorption signal reported by the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) Collaboration is in tension with the prediction of the $Λ$CDM model at a $3.8\,σ$ significance level. In this work, we report that this tension can be released by introducing an interaction between dark matter and vacuum energy. We perform a model parameter estimation using a combined dataset including EDGES and other recent cosmological observations, and find that the EDGES measurement can marginally improve the constraint on parameters that quan…
In this paper, we use The Quijote simulations in order to extract the cosmological parameters through Bayesian Neural Networks. This kind of model has a remarkable ability to estimate the associated uncertainty, which is one of the ultimate goals in the precision cosmology era. We demonstrate the advantages of BNNs for extracting more complex output distributions and non-Gaussianities information from the simulations.
We investigate potential constraints from cosmic shear on the dark matter particle mass, assuming all dark matter is made up of light thermal relic particles. Given the theoretical uncertainties involved in making cosmological predictions in such warm dark matter scenarios we use analytical fits to linear warm dark matter power spectra and compare (i) the halo model using a mass function evaluated from these linear power spectra and (ii) an analytical fit to the non-linear evolution of the linear power spectra. We optimistically ignore the competing effect of baryons for this work. We find app…
We briefly discuss the intriguing case of a phenomenological non-gravitational coupling in the dark sector, where the interaction is parameterized as an energy transfer either from dark matter to dark energy or the opposite. We show that a non-zero coupling with an energy flow from the latter to the former leads to a full reconciliation of the tension between high- and low-redshift observations present in the standard cosmological model.
There are many kinds of models which describe the dynamics of dark energy (DE). Among all we adopt an equation of state (EoS) which varies as a function of time. We adopt Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to constrain the five parameters of our models. As a consequence, we can show the characteristic behavior of DE during the evolution of the universe. We constrain the EoS of DE with use of the avairable data of gamma-ray bursts and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) concerning the redshift-luminosity distance relations. As a result, we find that DE is quintessence-like in the early time and phantom-li…
Observations of the frequency dependence of the global brightness temperature of the redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen may be possible with single dipole experiments. In this paper, we develop a Fisher matrix formalism for calculating the sensitivity of such instruments to the 21 cm signal from reionization and the dark ages. We show that rapid reionization histories with duration delta z< 2 can be constrained, provided that local foregrounds can be well modelled by low order polynomials. It is then shown that observations in the range nu = 50 - 100 MHz can feasibly constrain the Lyman…
With galaxy groups constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we analyze the expected galaxy-galaxy lensing signals around satellite galaxies residing in different host haloes and located at different halo-centric distances. We use Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to explore the potential constraints on the mass and density profile of subhaloes associated with satellite galaxies from SDSS-like surveys and surveys similar to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Our results show that for SDSS-like surveys, we can only set a loose constraint on the mean mass of subhaloes. …
We examine the effectiveness of the weak gravity conjecture in constraining the dark energy by comparing with observations. For general dark energy models with plausible phenomenological interactions between dark sectors, we find that although the weak gravity conjecture can constrain the dark energy, the constraint is looser than that from the observations.
Many extensions of Standard Model (SM) include a dark sector which can interact with the SM sector via a light mediator. We explore the possibilities to probe such a dark sector by studying the distortion of the CMB spectrum from the blackbody shape due to the elastic scatterings between the dark matter and baryons through a hidden light mediator. We in particular focus on the model where the dark sector gauge boson kinetically mixes with the SM and present the future experimental prospect for a PIXIE-like experiment along with its comparison to the existing bounds from complementary terrestri…
In this paper we propose a mechanism that protects theories violating a holographic bound suggested in arXiv:1203.5476 from developing accelerated expansion. The mechanism builts on work on transplanckian physics, and a non-trivial choice of vacuum states. If correct, it lends further support for detectable signatures in the CMBR signalling new physics.
For a general dark-energy equation of state, we estimate the maximum possible radius of massive structures that are not destabilized by the acceleration of the cosmological expansion. A comparison with known stable structures constrains the equation of state. The robustness of the constraint can be enhanced through the accumulation of additional astrophysical data and a better understanding of the dynamics of bound cosmic structures.
The constraints on non-minimal dark sectors involving ensembles of unstable dark-matter species are well established and quite stringent in cases in which these species decay to visible-sector particles. However, in cases in which these ensembles decay exclusively to other, lighter dark-sector states, the corresponding constraints are less well established. In this paper, we investigate how information about the expansion rate of the universe at low redshifts gleaned from observations of Type Ia supernovae can be used to constrain ensembles of unstable particles which decay primarily into dark…
In this work we have used the recent cosmic chronometers data along with the latest estimation of the local Hubble parameter value, $H_0$ at 2.4\% precision as well as the standard dark energy probes, such as the Supernovae Type Ia, baryon acoustic oscillation distance measurements, and cosmic microwave background measurements (PlanckTT $+$ lowP) to constrain a dark energy model where the dark energy is allowed to interact with the dark matter. A general equation of state of dark energy parametrized by a dimensionless parameter `$β$' is utilized. From our analysis, we find that the interaction…
We study a model of interacting dark matter and dark energy, in which the two components are coupled. We calculate the predictions for the 21-cm intensity mapping power spectra, and forecast the detectability with future single-dish intensity mapping surveys (BINGO, FAST and SKA-I). Since dark energy is turned on at $z\sim 1$, which falls into the sensitivity range of these radio surveys, the HI intensity mapping technique is an efficient tool to constrain the interaction. By comparing with current constraints on dark sector interactions, we find that future radio surveys will produce tight an…
Astrophysical neutrinos travel long distances from their sources to the Earth traversing dark matter halos of clusters of galaxies and that of our own Milky Way. The interaction of neutrinos with dark matter may affect the flux of neutrinos. The recent multi-messenger observation of a high energy neutrino, IceCube-170922A, can give a robust upper bound $σ/M_{dm} \lesssim 5.1\times 10^{-23} {\rm cm}^2 /$GeV on the interaction between neutrino and dark matter at a neutrino energy of 290 TeV allowing 90\% suppression. Combining the constraints from CMB and LSS at different neutrino energies, we c…
Even if Dark Matter (DM) is neutral under electromagnetism, it can still interact with the Standard Model (SM) via photon exchange from higher-dimensional operators. Here we classify the general effective operators coupling DM to photons, distinguishing between Dirac/Majorana fermion and complex/real scalar DM. We provide model-independent constraints on these operators from direct and indirect detection. We also constrain various DM-lepton operators, which induce DM-photon interactions via RG running or which typically arise in sensible UV-completions. This provides a simple way to quickly as…
We present here up-to-date neutrino mass limits exploiting the most recent cosmological data sets. By making use of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuation and polarization measurements, Supernovae Ia luminosity distances, Baryon Acoustic Oscillation observations and determinations of the growth rate parameter, we are able to set the most constraining bound to date, $\sum m_ν<0.09$ eV at $95\%$~CL. This very tight limit is obtained without the assumption of any prior on the value of the Hubble constant and highly compromises the viability of the inverted mass ordering as the un…
Using renormalization-group flow and cosmological constraints on inflation models, we exploit a unique connection between cosmological inflation and the dynamical mass of dark-matter particles in the luminogenesis model, a unification model with the gauge group $SU(3)_C \times SU(6) \times U(1)_Y$, which breaks to the Standard Model with an extra gauge group for dark matter when the inflaton rolls into the true vacuum. In this model, inflaton decay gives rise to dark matter, which in turn decays to luminous matter in the right proportion that agrees with cosmological data. Some attractive feat…
If ultralight $(\ll$ eV), bosonic dark matter couples to right handed neutrinos, active neutrino masses and mixing angles depend on the ambient dark matter density. When the neutrino Majorana mass, induced by the dark matter background, is small compared to the Dirac mass, neutrinos are "pseudo-Dirac" fermions that undergo oscillations between nearly degenerate active and sterile states. We present a complete cosmological history for such a scenario and find severe limits from a variety of terrestrial and cosmological observables. For scalar masses in the "fuzzy" dark matter regime ($\sim 10^{…
Sanchez and Lacombe have ever developed a lattice fluid theory based on a well-defined statistical mechanical model. Taking the lattice fluid as a candidate of dark energy, we investigate the cosmic evolution of this fluid. Using the combined observational data of Type Ia Supernova (SNe Ia), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Observational Hubble Data (OHD), we find the best fit value of the parameter in the model, $A = -0.3_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$. Then the cosmological implications of the model are presented.
We proposed a model-independent method to constrain the cosmological parameters using the Distance Sum Rule of the FLRW metric by combining the time delay distances and the comoving distances through a multi-messenger approach. The time delay distances are measured from lensed gravitational wave~(GW) signals together with their corresponding electromagnetic wave~(EM) counterpart, while the comoving distances are obtained from a parametrized fitting approach with independent supernova observations. With a series of simulations based on Einstein Telescope, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and The…
I present the first constraints on decaying cold dark matter (DCDM) models thanks to the effective field theory of large-scale structure (EFTofLSS) applied to BOSS-DR12 data. I consider two phenomenological models of DCDM: i) a model where a fraction $f_{\rm dcdm}$ of cold dark matter (CDM) decays into dark radiation (DR) with a lifetime $τ$; ii) a model (recently suggested as a potential resolution to the $S_8$ tension) where all the CDM decays with a lifetime $τ$ into DR and a massive warm dark matter (WDM) particle, with a fraction $\varepsilon$ of the CDM rest mass energy transferred to th…
Recently, the observed equation of state for dark energy appears to favor values below $-1$. The tendency implies that the nature of dark energy may be quite different from that of the cosmological constant. In view of the adjustment on the equation of state keeps decreasing, the introduction of the phantom energy seems inevitable. By employing observational constraints from supernovae and from the acoustic scale in which the accuracy of the data has become extraordinary, we apply a phenomenological scenario to be acquainted with the evolution of our universe. The demonstration on the constrai…
We show that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) significantly constrains axion-like dark matter. The axion acts like an oscillating QCD $θ$ angle that redshifts in the early universe, increasing the neutron-proton mass difference at neutron freeze-out. An axion-like particle that couples too strongly to QCD results in the underproduction of 4He during BBN and is thus excluded. The BBN bound overlaps with much of the parameter space that would be covered by proposed searches for time-varying neutron EDMs. The QCD axion does not couple strongly enough to affect BBN.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionise our understanding of early galaxy formation, and could potentially set stringent constraints on the nature of dark matter. We use a semi-empirical model of galaxy formation to investigate the extent to which uncertainties in the implementation of baryonic physics may be degenerate with the predictions of two different models of dark matter -- Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and a 7 keV sterile neutrino, which behaves as Warm Dark Matter (WDM). Our models are calibrated to the observed UV luminosity function at $z=4$ using two separate dust attenu…
We study the density structures of dark matter subhalos for both cold dark matter and self-interacting dark matter models using high-resolution cosmological $N$-body simulations. We quantify subhalo's central density at 150 pc from the center of each subhalo at the classical dwarf spheroidal and ultrafaint dwarf scales found in Milky-Way sized halos. By comparing them with observations, we find that the self-interacting scattering cross-section of $σ/m<3\ \rm{cm^{2}g^{-1}}$ is favored. Due to the combination of hosts' tide and self-interactions, the central density of subhalos with small peric…
We study models in which neutrino masses are generated dynamically at cosmologically late times. Our study is purely phenomenological and parameterized in terms of three effective parameters characterizing the redshift of mass generation, the width of the transition region, and the present day neutrino mass. We also study the possibility that neutrinos become strongly self-interacting at the time where the mass is generated. We find that in a number of cases, models with large present day neutrino masses are allowed by current CMB, BAO and supernova data. The increase in the allowed mass range…
In a large class of models we show that the light scalar field responsible for the Sommerfeld enhancement in the annihilation of dark matter leads to observable direct detection rates, due to its mixing with the standard model Higgs. As a result the large annihilation cross-section of dark matter at present epoch, required to explain the observed cosmic ray anomalies, can be strongly constrained by direct searches. In particular Sommerfeld boost factors of order of a few hundred are already out of the CDMS-II upper bound at 90% confidence level for reasonable values of the model parameters.
Based on the assumption that the dark energy possessing bulk viscosity is homogenously and isotropically permeated in the universe, we propose three new viscous dark energy (VDE) models to characterize the accelerating universe. By constraining these three models with the latest cosmological observations, we find that they just deviate very slightly from the standard cosmological model and can alleviate effectively the current $H_0$ tension between the local observation by the Hubble Space Telescope and the global measurement by the Planck Satellite. Interestingly, we conclude that a spatially…
We perform a forecast analysis of the capability of the eLISA space-based interferometer to constrain models of early and interacting dark energy using gravitational wave standard sirens. We employ simulated catalogues of standard sirens given by merging massive black hole binaries visible by eLISA, with an electromagnetic counterpart detectable by future telescopes. We consider three-arms mission designs with arm length of 1, 2 and 5 million km, 5 years of mission duration and the best-level low frequency noise as recently tested by the LISA Pathfinder. Standard sirens with eLISA give access …
We constrain scattering length parameters in a Bose-Einstein condensate dark matter model by using galaxy clusters radii, with the implementation of a method previously applied to galaxies. At the present work, we use a sample of 114 clusters radii in order to obtain the scattering lengths associated with a dark matter particle mass in the range $10^{-6}-10^{-4}\, {\rm eV}$. We obtain scattering lengths that are five orders of magnitude larger than the ones found in the galactic case, even when taking into account the cosmological expansion in the cluster scale by means of the introduction of …
We investigate the possibility of constraining the dark energy equation of state by measuring the ratio of Einstein radii in a strong gravitational lens system with two source planes. This quantity is independent of the Hubble parameter and directly measures the growth of angular diameter distances as a function of redshift. We investigate the prospects for a single double source plane system and for a forecast population of systems discovered by re-observing a population of single source lenses already known from a photometrically selected catalogue such as CASSOWARY or from a spectroscopical…
We use six different cosmological models to study the recently-released compilation of X-ray and UV flux measurements of 2038 quasars (QSOs) which span the redshift range $0.009 \leq z \leq 7.5413$. We find, for the full QSO data set, that the parameters of the X-ray and UV luminosities $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation used to standardized these QSOs depend on the cosmological model used to determine these parameters, i.e, it appears that the full QSO data set include QSOs that are not standardized and so cannot be used for the purpose of constraining cosmological parameters. Subsets of the QSO data, res…
It has been long discussed that cosmic rays may contain signals of dark matter. In the last couple of years an anomaly of cosmic-ray positrons has drawn a lot of attentions, and recently an excess in cosmic-ray anti-proton has been reported by AMS-02 collaboration. Both excesses may indicate towards decaying or annihilating dark matter with a mass of around 1-10 TeV. In this article we study the gamma rays from dark matter and constraints from cross correlations with distribution of galaxies, particularly in a local volume. We find that gamma rays due to inverse-Compton process have large inte…
The dispersion measure of extragalactic radio transients, such as of recently discovered Fast Radio Burst FRB150418, can be used to measure the column density of free electrons in the intergalactic medium. The same electrons also scatter the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons, affecting precision measurements of cosmological parameters. We explore the connection between the dispersion measure of radio transients existing during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) and the total optical depth for the CMB, $τ_{CMB}$, showing that the existence of such transients would provide a new sensitive p…
