In the standard model of cosmology, the universe is described by a Robertson-Walker spacetime, while its matter/energy content is modeled by a perfect fluid with three components corresponding to matter/dust, radiation and a cosmological constant. On the other hand, in particle physics matter and radiation are described in terms of quantum field theory on Minkowski spacetime. We unify these seemingly different theoretical frameworks by analysing the standard model of cosmology from first principles within quantum field theory on curved spacetime: assuming that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales, we specify a class of quantum states whose expectation value of the energy density is qualitatively and quantitatively of the standard perfect fluid form up to potential corrections. Qualitatively, these corrections depend on new parameters not present in the standard Lambda CDM-model and can account for e.g. the phenomenon of Dark Radiation (N_eff>3.046), having a characteristic signature which clearly deviates from other potential Dark Radiation sources such as e.g. sterile neutrinos. Quantitatively, we find that our more fundamental model can be perfectly matched to observational data, such that we arrive at a natural and fundamental extension of the Lambda CDM-model.
We model the large scale late time universe as a Lambda-CDM cosmology driven by cosmological constant and perfect dust fluid. Our aim is to find new solutions in the matter and Lambda epoch consistent with inflationary initial conditions, namely that to the far past in the matter era the cosmology tends to a flat FLRW solution. We identify the moduli degrees of freedom that parametrize the flat Lambda-dust FLRW solution and then promote these moduli to slowly varying functions of the spatial coordinates and show how to solve the Einstein equations in a comoving gradient expansion, controlled b…
The Universe on large scales is well described by the Lambda-CDM cosmological model. There however remain some heavy clouds on our global understanding, especially on galaxy scales, which we review here. While some of these clouds might perhaps disappear through small compensatory adjustments of the model, such as changing the mass of the dark matter particles or accounting better for baryonic physics, others should rather be taken as strong indications that the physics of the dark sector is, at the very least, much richer and complex than currently assumed, and that our understanding of gravi…
This paper treats nonrelativistic matter and a scalar field $ϕ$ with a monotonically decreasing potential minimally coupled to gravity in flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmology. The field equations are reformulated as a three-dimensional dynamical system on an extended compact state space, complemented with cosmographic diagrams. A dynamical systems analysis provides global dynamical results describing possible asymptotic behavior. It is shown that one should impose \emph{global and asymptotic} bounds on $λ=-V^{-1}\,dV/dϕ$ to obtain viable cosmological models that continuously defo…
Assuming homogeneous isotropic Lambda-CDM cosmology allows Lambda, spatial curvature and dark matter density to be inferred from large scale structure observations such as supernovae. The purpose of this paper is to extend this to allow observations to measure or constrain inhomogeneity and anisotropy. We obtain the general inhomogeneous anisotropic Lambda-CDM solution which is locally asymptotic to an expanding de Sitter solution as a late time expansion using Starobinsky's method (analogous to the `holographic renormalization' technique in AdS/CFT) together with a resummation of the series. …
The evolution of the mass of a black hole embedded in a universe filled with dark energy and cold dark matter is calculated in a closed form within a test fluid model in a Schwarzschild metric, taking into account the cosmological evolution of both fluids. The result describes exactly how accretion asymptotically switches from the matter-dominated to the Lambda-dominated regime. For early epochs, the black hole mass increases due to dark matter accretion, and on later epochs the increase in mass stops as dark energy accretion takes over. Thus, the unphysical behaviour of previous analyses is i…
We consider spherically symmetric inhomogeneous dust models with a positive cosmological constant, $Λ$, given by the Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi metric. These configurations provide a simple but useful generalization of the Lambda-CDM model describing cold dark matter (CDM) and a Lambda term, which seems to fit current cosmological observations. The dynamics of these models can be fully described by scalar evolution equations that can be given in the form of a proper dynamical system associated with a 4-dimensional phase space whose critical points and invariant subspaces are examined and classified…
We construct a model of dark energy with a technically natural small contribution to cosmic acceleration, i.e. this contribution does not receive corrections from other scales in the theory. The proposed acceleration mechanism appears generically in the low-energy limit of gravity theories with violation of Lorentz invariance that contain a derivatively coupled scalar field Theta. The latter may be the Goldstone field of a broken global symmetry. The model, that we call Theta-CDM, is a valid effective field theory up to a high cutoff just a few orders of magnitude below the Planck scale. Furth…
Cosmological inflation models with modifications to include recent cosmological observations has been an active area of research after WMAP 3 results, which have given us information about the composition of dark matter, normal matter and dark energy and the anisotropy at the 300,000 years horizon with high precision. We work on inflation models of Guth and Linde and modify them by introducing a doublet scalar field to give normal matter particles and their supersymmetric partners which result in normal and dark matter of our universe. We include the cosmological constant term as the vaccuum e…
Our primary objective is to construct a plausible unified model of inflation, dark energy and dark matter from a fundamental Lagrangian action first principle, where all fundamental ingredients are systematically dynamically generated starting from a very simple model of modified gravity interacting with a single scalar field employing the formalism of non-Riemannian spacetime volume-elements. The non-Riemannian volume element in the initial scalar field action leads to a hidden nonlinear Noether symmetry which produces energy-momentum tensor identified as a sum of a dynamically generated cosm…
We consider the primordial gravitational wave (GW) background in a class of spatially-flat inflationary cosmological models with cold dark matter (CDM), a cosmological constant, and a broken-scale-invariant (BSI) steplike primordial (initial) spectrum of adiabatic perturbations produced in an exactly solvable inflationary model where the inflaton potential has a rapid change of its first derivative at some point. In contrast to inflationary models with a scale-free initial spectrum, these models may have a GW power spectrum whose amplitude (though not its shape) is arbitrary for fixed amplitud…
The observational success and simplicity of the $Λ$CDM model, and the explicit analytic perturbations thereof, set the standard for any alternative cosmology. It therefore serves as a comparison ground and as a test case for methods which can be extended and applied to other cosmological models. In this paper we introduce dynamical systems and methods to describe linear scalar and tensor perturbations of the $Λ$CDM model, which serve as pedagogical examples that show the global illustrative powers of dynamical systems in the context of cosmological perturbations. We also study the asymptotic p…
A complete analysis of the dynamics of the Hu-Sawicki modification to General Relativity is presented. In particular, the full phase-space is given for the case in which the model parameters are taken to be n=1, c1=1, and several stable de Sitter equilibrium points together with an unstable "matter-like" point are identified. We find that if the cosmological parameters are chosen to take on their Lambda CDM values today, this results in a universe which, until very low redshifts, is dominated by an equation of state parameter equal t1/3, leading to an expansion history very different from Lamb…
In this article we study cosmic dynamics in the context of normal branch of DGP braneworld model. Using the current Planck data, we best fit the model and cosmological parameters in non-flat $Λ$DGP. With the transition redshift as a basic variable and statefinder parameters, our result shows that the Universe starts its accelerated expansion phase, slightly earlier than expected in $Λ$CDM cosmology. The result also alleviates the coincidence problem of the $Λ$CDM model.
In the past decade or so observations of supernovae, Large Scale Structures (LSS), and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have confirmed the presence of what is called dark energy - the cause of accelerating expansion of the Universe. They have also measured its density as well as the value of other cosmological parameters according to the concordance $Λ$CDM model with few percent uncertainties. Next generation of surveys should allow to constrain this model with better precisions, or distinguish between a LCDM and alternative models such as modified gravity and (interacting)-quintessence m…
Tight constraints on cosmological parameters can be obtained with standard candles spanning a range of redshifts as large as possible. We propose to treat SN Ia and long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) as a single class of candles. Taking advantage of the recent release of the Supernova Legacy Survey and {\it the recent finding of a tight correlation among the energetics and other prompt gamma-ray emission properties of GRBs}, we are able to standardize the luminosities/energetics of both classes of objects. In this way we can jointly use GRB and SNIa as cosmological probes to constrain Omega_m and Om…
The discovery of supernova SN 1997ff at z~1.7 has confirmed the expected switch from cosmological acceleration to deceleration, as predicted by the concordance Lambda/CDM model. However, its position in the SN Ia Hubble diagram suggestes that the switch is too pronounced, which here is taken to mean that a cosmological constant is not an adequate description of the state of the vacuum. An 'oscillessence' model is invoked, with a scalar field phi governed by a simple quadratic potential, which gives a better fit to the new data point. The field is undergoing coherent oscillations, and a key fea…
A class of Stephani cosmological models as a prototype of non-homogeneous universe is considered. The non-homogeneity can lead to accelerated evolution which is now observed from the SNIa data. Three samples of type Ia supernovae obtained by Perlmutter at al., Tonry et al. and Knop et al. are taken into account. Different statistical methods (best fits as well as maximum likelihood method) to obtain estimates of the model parameters are used. Stephani model is considered as an alternative to the concordance of Lambda-CDM model in the explanation of the present acceleration of the universe. The…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) offers one of the most strict evidences for the Lambda-CDM cosmology at present, as well as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. In this work, our main aim is to present the outcomes of our calculations related to primordial abundances of light elements, in the context of higher dimensional steady-state universe model in the dilaton gravity. Our results show that abundances of light elements (primordial D, 3He, 4He, T, 7Li) are significantly different for some cases, and a comparison is given between a particular dilaton gravity model and Lambda-CDM i…
The timescape cosmology has been proposed as a viable alternative to homogeneous cosmologies with dark energy. It realises cosmic acceleration as an apparent effect that arises in calibrating average cosmological parameters in the presence of spatial curvature and gravitational energy gradients that grow large with the growth of inhomogeneities at late epochs. Recently Kwan, Francis and Lewis [arXiv:0902.4249] have claimed that the timescape model provides a relatively poor fit to the Union and Constitution supernovae compilations, as compared to the standard Lambda CDM model. We show this con…
The Lambda-CDM cosmological model is succesful at reproducing various independent sets of observations concerning the large-scale Universe. This model is however currently, and actually in principle, unable to predict the gravitational field of a galaxy from it observed baryons alone. Indeed the gravitational field should depend on the relative contribution of the particle dark matter distribution to the baryonic one, itself depending on the individual assembly history and environment of the galaxy, including a lot of complex feedback mechanisms. However, for the last thirty years, Milgrom's f…
The $Λ$-term in Einstein's equations is a fundamental building block of the `concordance' $Λ$CDM model of cosmology. Even though the model is not free of fundamental problems, they have not been circumvented by any alternative dark energy proposal either. Here we stick to the $Λ$-term, but we contend that it can be a `running quantity' in quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime. A plethora of phenomenological works have shown that this option can be highly competitive with the $Λ$CDM with a rigid cosmological term. The, so-called, `running vacuum models' (RVM's) are characterized by the…
We constrain interacting dark matter and dark energy (IDMDE) models using a 450-degree-square cosmic shear data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and the angular power spectra from Planck's latest cosmic microwave background measurements. We revisit the discordance problem in the standard Lambda cold dark matter ($Λ$CDM) model between weak lensing and Planck datasets and extend the discussion by introducing interacting dark sectors. The IDMDE models are found to be able to alleviate the discordance between KiDS and Planck as previously inferred from the $Λ$CDM model, and moderately favored by…
The idea of a variable dark energy has been entertained many times in the literature and from many different points of view. Quintessence is just a popular way to implement this idea in recent times, but so far with little success. Another possibility is to think of the cosmological term, Lambda, as a ``running quantity'' much in the same way as the electromagnetic coupling constant. However, the fact that Lambda is a dimension-four parameter implies that it may obey a peculiar renormalization group equation, which at low energies could be dominated by ``soft decoupling'' contributions of the …
We put forward a new model-independent reconstruction scheme for dark energy which utilises the expected geometrical features of the luminosity-distance relation. The important advantage of this scheme is that it does not assume explicit ansatzes for cosmological parameters but only some very general cosmological properties via the geometrical features of the reconstructed luminosity-distance relation. Using the recently released supernovae data by the Supernova Legacy Survey together with a phase space representation, we show that the reconstructed luminosity-distance curves best fitting the …
Accelerated expansion of the Universe may result from an anti-frictional force that is self-consistently exerted on cold dark matter (CDM). Cosmic anti-friction is shown to give rise to an effective negative pressure of the cosmic medium. While other models introduce a component of dark energy besides ``standard'' CDM, we resort to a phenomenological one-component model of CDM with internal self-interactions. We demonstrate how the dynamics of the LambdaCDM model may be recovered as a special case of cosmic anti-friction.
For the O(N) field theory with lambda Phi^4 self-coupling, we construct the two-particle-irreducible (2PI), closed-time-path (CTP) effective action in a general curved spacetime. From this we derive a set of coupled equations for the mean field and the variance. They are useful for studying the nonperturbative, nonequilibrium dynamics of a quantum field when full back reactions of the quantum field on the curved spacetime, as well as the fluctuations on the mean field, are required. Applications to phase transitions in the early Universe such as the Planck scale or in the reheating phase of ch…
The phenomenology of the modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) can be recovered from a mechanism of "gravitational polarization" of some dipolar medium playing the role of dark matter. We review a relativistic model of dipolar dark matter (DDM) within standard general relativity to describe, at some effective level, a fluid polarizable in a gravitational field. At first order in cosmological perturbation theory, this model is equivalent to the concordance cosmological scenario, or Lambda-cold dark matter (CDM) model. At second order, however, the internal energy of DDM modifies the curvature pert…
In this work we explore under a holographic approach the dark energy - dark matter interaction in a non-flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker spacetime, with a cut-off for the dark energy component given in terms of the Hubble scale. Based on results coming from the use of observational data, we consider a positive interaction $Q$-term together with a Chevallier-Polarsky-Linder type parametrization for the coincidence parameter, we realize that the model admits a Type III future singularity, in this singular universe we have that for a null value of the curvature parameter its scale factor …
In this work, we study two scenarios of the Universe filled by a perfect fluid following the traditional dark energy and a viscous fluid as dark matter. In this sense, we explore the simplest case for the viscosity in the Eckart formalism, a constant, and then, a polynomial function of the redshift. We constrain the phase-space of the model parameters by performing a Bayesian analysis based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo method and using the latest data of the Hubble parameter (OHD), Type Ia Supernovae (SNIa) and Strong Lensing Systems. The first two samples cover the region $0.01<z<2.36$. Based …
In this work, we explore the phenomenon of cosmic evolution using curved FLRW space-time bounded by apparent horizon with a specific holographic cut-off. To this end, we use the framework of Rastall gravity (RG) and universe is assumed to be consists of interacting/ non-interacting dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM). In both scenarios, we evaluate exact solutions of the dynamical equations and constraint the holographic parameter $c^{2}(z)$ assuming a slowly varying function of red-shift during non-interacting model. For interacting model, we consider $c^{2}$ as a constant function of red-s…
Following the holographic principle, which suggests that the energy density of dark energy may be proportional inversely to the area of the event horizon of the Universe, we have proposed a new energy density of dark energy through the acceleration of particle horizon scaled by the length of this parameter. This model depends only on one free parameter beta=0-1.99. For beta's near zero, the deviation of the model compared with the Lambda CDM model is tangible while for values beta=1.99, the suggested model has no conflict with Lambda CDM theory. Regardless of the value of beta, the model prese…
This paper continues the analysis of the quantum states determined by the universal asymptotic structure of four-dimensional asymptotically flat vacuum spacetimes at null infinity M. It is now focused on the quantum state lambda_M, of a massles conformally coupled scalar field phi propagating in M. lambda_M is ``holographically'' induced in the bulk by the universal BMS-invariant state lambda at infinity scri of M. It is done by means of the correspondence between observables in the bulk and those on the boundary at null infinity discussed in previous papers. The induction is possible when som…
The fact that the LambdaCDM model fits the observations does not necessarily imply the physical existence of `dark energy'. Dropping the assumption that cold dark matter (CDM) is a perfect fluid opens the possibility to fit the data without dark energy. For imperfect CDM, negative bulk pressure is favoured by thermodynamical arguments and might drive the cosmic acceleration. The coincidence between the onset of accelerated expansion and the epoch of structure formation at large scales might suggest that the two phenomena are linked. A specific example is considered in which effective (anti-fri…
Imagine a scenario in which the dark energy forms via the condensation of dark matter at some low redshift. The Compton wavelength therefore changes from small to very large at the transition, unlike quintessence or metamorphosis. We study CMB, large scale structure, supernova and radio galaxy constraints on condensation by performing a 4 parameter likelihood analysis over the Hubble constant and the three parameters associated with Q, the condensate field: Omega_Q, w_f and z_t (energy density and equation of state today, and redshift of transition). Condensation roughly interpolates between L…
A model of dark matter and dark energy based on the concept of gravitational polarization is investigated. We propose an action in standard general relativity for describing, at some effective or phenomenological level, the dynamics of a dipolar medium, i.e. one endowed with a dipole moment vector, and polarizable in a gravitational field. Using first-order cosmological perturbations, we show that the dipolar fluid is undistinguishable from standard dark energy (a cosmological constant Lambda) plus standard dark matter (a pressureless perfect fluid), and therefore benefits from the successes o…
