English

Swiss Cheese and a Cheesy CMB

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2009-06-08 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

It has been argued that the Swiss-Cheese cosmology can mimic Dark Energy, when it comes to the observed luminosity distance-redshift relation. Besides the fact that this effect tends to disappear on average over random directions, we show in this work that based on the Rees-Sciama effect on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the Swiss-Cheese model can be ruled out if all holes have a radius larger than about 35 Mpc. We also show that for smaller holes, the CMB is not observably affected, and that the small holes can still mimic Dark Energy, albeit in special directions, as opposed to previous conclusions in the literature. However, in this limit, the probability of looking in a special direction where the luminosity of supernovae is sufficiently supressed becomes very small, at least in the case of a lattice of spherical holes considered in this paper.

Cite

@article{arxiv.0902.4698,
  title  = {Swiss Cheese and a Cheesy CMB},
  author = {Wessel Valkenburg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.4698},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

23 pages, 10 figures. Matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:16:10.717Z