English

Cosmic Microwave Background, Accelerating Universe and Inhomogeneous Cosmology

Astrophysics 2008-11-26 v6

Abstract

We consider a cosmology in which a spherically symmetric large scale inhomogeneous enhancement or a void are described by an inhomogeneous metric and Einstein's gravitational equations. For a flat matter dominated universe the inhomogeneous equations lead to luminosity distance and Hubble constant formulas that depend on the location of the observer. For a general inhomogeneous solution, it is possible for the deceleration parameter to differ significantly from the FLRW result. The deceleration parameter q0q_0 can be interpreted as q0>0q_0 > 0 (q0=1/2q_0=1/2 for a flat matter dominated universe) in a FLRW universe and be q0<0q_0 < 0 as inferred from the inhomogeneous enhancement that is embedded in a FLRW universe. A spatial volume averaging of local regions in the backward light cone has to be performed for the inhomogeneous solution at late times to decide whether the decelerating parameter qq can be negative for a positive energy condition. The CMB temperature fluctuations across the sky can be unevenly distributed in the northern and southern hemispheres in the inhomogeneous matter dominated solution, in agreement with the analysis of the WMAP power spectrum data by several authors. The model can possibly explain the anomalous alignment of the quadrupole and octopole moments observed in the WMAP data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0502110,
  title  = {Cosmic Microwave Background, Accelerating Universe and Inhomogeneous Cosmology},
  author = {J. W. Moffat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0502110},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

20 pages, no figures, LaTex file. Equations and typos corrected and references added. Additional material and some conclusions changed. Final published version