Related papers: Null geodesics and observational cosmology
The universe is not isotropic or spatially homogeneous on local scales. The averaging of local inhomogeneities in general relativity can lead to significant dynamical effects on the evolution of the universe and on the interpretation of…
The gravitational field equations on cosmological scales are obtained by averaging the Einstein field equations of general relativity. By assuming spatial homogeneity and isotropy on the largest scales, the local inhomogeneities affect the…
This article looks at how inhomogeneous spacetime models may be significant for cosmology. First it looks at how the averaging process may affect large scale dynamics, with backreaction effects leading to effective contributions to the…
If general relativity (GR) describes the expansion of the Universe, the observed cosmic acceleration implies the existence of a `dark energy'. However, while the Universe is on average homogeneous on large scales, it is inhomogeneous on…
It is generally assumed that on sufficiently large scales the Universe is well-described as a homogeneous, isotropic FRW cosmology with a dark energy. Does the formation of nonlinear cosmic inhomogeneities produce a significant effect on…
We study the effects of inhomogeneities on the evolution of the Universe, by considering a range of cosmological models with discretized matter content. This is done using exact and fully relativistic methods that exploit the symmetries in…
A large-scale smoothed-out model of the universe ignores small-scale inhomogeneities, but the averaged effects of those inhomogeneities may alter both observational and dynamical relations at the larger scale. This article discusses these…
The standard model of cosmology assumes that the Universe can be described to hover around a homogeneous-isotropic solution of Einstein's general theory of relativity. This description needs (sometimes hidden) hypotheses that restrict the…
With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost…
A mildly inhomogeneous universe with a cosmological constant may look like it contains evolving dark energy. We show that could be the case by modelling the inhomogeneities and their effects in three different ways: as clumped matter…
One of the fundamental assumptions of the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology is that, on large scales, all the matter-energy components of the Universe share a common rest frame. This seems natural for the visible sector, that has been in…
The present talk summarizes the recently progressed state of a systematic re-evaluation of cosmological models that respect the presence of inhomogeneities. Emphasis is given to identifying the basic steps towards an effective (i.e.…
We reconsider the issue of proving large scale spatial homogeneity of the universe, given isotropic observations about us and the possibility of source evolution both in numbers and luminosities. Two theorems make precise the freedom…
Idealizing matter as a pressureless fluid and representing its motion by a peculiar--velocity field superimposed on a homogeneous and isotropic Hubble expansion, we apply (Lagrangian) spatial averaging on an arbitrary domain $\cal D$ to the…
Cosmic structures determine how light propagates through the Universe and consequently must be taken into account in the interpretation of observations. In the standard cosmological model at the largest scales, such structures are either…
The question of the averaging of inhomogeneous spacetimes in cosmology is important for the correct interpretation of cosmological data. In this paper we suggest a conceptually simpler approach to averaging in cosmology based on the…
We outline the key-steps toward the construction of a physical, fully relativistic cosmology. The influence of inhomogeneities on the effective evolution history of the Universe is encoded in backreaction terms and expressed through…
The interpretation of cosmological observations relies on a notion of an average Universe, which is usually considered as the homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) model. However, inhomogeneities may…
The Universe is inhomogeneous, and yet it seems to be incredibly well-characterised by a homogeneous relativistic model. One of the current challenges is to accurately characterise the properties of such a model. In this paper we explore…
Based on the cosmological principle only, the method of describing the evolution of the Universe, called cosmography, is in fact a kinematics of cosmological expansion. The effectiveness of cosmography lies in the fact that it allows, based…