Related papers: The case for an aggressive program of dark energy …
Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed…
A strong instrumentation and detector R&D program has enabled the current generation of cosmic frontier surveys. A small investment in R&D will continue to pay dividends and enable new probes to investigate the accelerated expansion of the…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
The discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s was a watershed moment in modern cosmology, as it indicated the presence of a fundamentally new, dominant contribution to the energy budget of the universe. Evidence for dark…
Illuminating the nature of dark energy is one of the most important challenges in cosmology today. In this review I discuss several promising observational approaches to understanding dark energy, in the context of the recommendations by…
In this paper we review a part of the approaches that have been considered to explain the extraordinary discovery of the late time acceleration of the Universe. We discuss the arguments that have led physicists and astronomers to accept…
In this paper we review in detail a number of approaches that have been adopted to try and explain the remarkable observation of our accelerating Universe. In particular we discuss the arguments for and recent progress made towards…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration has stimulated theorists to consider dark energy or modifications to Einstein's General Relativity as possible explanations. The last decade has seen advances in theories that go beyond smooth dark…
In this series of lectures we review observational evidence for, and theoretical investigations into, cosmic acceleration and dark energy. The notes are in four sections. First I review the basic cosmological formalism to describe the…
The physics community has adopted the principle that when new experimental data appears, physicists should first try to explain it based on existing science. Only if all such attempts fail can new exotic explanations be brought in. However,…
The discovery that we live in an accelerating universe changed drastically the paradigm of physics and introduced the concept of \textit{dark energy}. In this work, we present a brief historical description of the main events related to the…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
It is argued that the discovery of cosmic acceleration could have been anticipated on thermodynamic grounds, namely, the generalized second law and the approach to equilibrium at large scale factor. Therefore, the existence of dark energy…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration has triggered a consistent body of theoretical work aimed at modeling its phenomenology and understanding its fundamental physical nature. In recent years, a powerful formalism that accomplishes both…
Astronomers carry out observations to explore the diverse processes and objects which populate our Universe. High-energy physicists carry out experiments to approach the Fundamental Theory underlying space, time and matter. Dark Energy is a…
Despite two decades of tremendous experimental and theoretical progress, the riddle of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains to be solved. On the experimental side, our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe is one of the most surprising and potentially profound discoveries of modern cosmology. Measuring the acceleration well enough to meaningfully constrain interesting physical models requires…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
Understanding the space of possible theoretical explanations for the observed cosmic acceleration is a central challenge of modern cosmology. This brief document sketches selected aspects of approaches to this problem, focusing on the…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…