Related papers: Mapping the Cosmological Expansion
The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades, implying that the universe is dominated by some form of "dark energy" with exotic physical properties, or that Einstein's theory of…
Context. Explaining the accelerated expansion of the Universe is one of the fundamental challenges in physics today. Cosmography provides information about the evolution of the universe derived from measured distances, assuming only that…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
In the late 1990s, observations of type Ia supernovae led to the astounding discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The explanation of this anomalous acceleration has been one of the great problems in physics since…
An overview is given of the current status of the theory and observations of the acceleration of the expansion of the observable part of the Universe. Contents 1. Historical Introduction 2. Friedmann equations and cosmological acceleration…
The "standard" model of cosmology is founded on the basis that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating at present --- as was inferred originally from the Hubble diagram of Type Ia supernovae. There exists now a much bigger…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration is one of the most important developments in modern cosmology. The observation, thirteen years ago, that type Ia supernovae appear dimmer that they would have been in a decelerating universe followed by…
Over the last 20 years, supernovae have become a key tool to constrain the expansion history of the Universe through the construction of Hubble diagrams, using luminosity distances to supernovae belonging to the "Ia" subtype. This technique…
The accelerating expansion of the universe is one of the most profound discoveries in modern cosmology, pointing to a universe in which 70% of the mass-energy density has an unknown form spread uniformly across the universe. This result has…
Over the last decade, cosmological observations have attained a level of precision which allows for detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. In this paper, we briefly review some studies of the current and prospected constraints…
We are experiencing a period of extreme intellectual effervescence in the area of cosmology. A huge volume of observational data in unprecedented quantity and quality and a more consistent theoretical framework propelled cosmology to an era…
The principles of General Relativity allow for a non-vanishing cosmological constant, which can possibly be interpreted at least partially in terms of quantum-fluctuations of matter fields. Depending on sign and magnitude it can cause…
The discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating has been followed by an intense theoretical and experimental response in physics and astronomy. The discovery implies that our most basic notions about how gravity work are violated on…
Mapping the expansion of the universe gives clues to the underlying physics causing the recently discovered acceleration of the expansion, and enables discrimination among cosmological models. We examine the utility of measuring the rate of…
In the past decade, observational cosmology has had one of the most exciting periods in the past century. The precision with which we have been able to measure cosmological parameters has increased tremendously, while at the same time, we…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and…
The current standard cosmological model is constructed within the framework of general relativity with a cosmological constant $\Lambda$, which is often associated with dark energy, and phenomenologically explains the accelerated cosmic…
The current accelerated expansion of the universe has been one of the most important fields in physics and astronomy since 1998. Many cosmological models have been proposed in the literature to explain this mysterious phenomenon. Since the…
We investigate what current cosmological data tells us about the cosmological expansion rate in a model independent way. Specifically, we study if the expansion was decelerating at high redshifts and is accelerating now, without referring…