Related papers: Null geodesics and observational cosmology
We argue that standard tools of holography can be used to describe fully non-perturbative microscopic models of cosmology in which a period of accelerated expansion may result from the positive potential energy of time-dependent scalar…
Usually, we assume that there is no inhomogeneity isotropic in terms of our location in our uni- verse. This assumption has not been observationally confirmed yet in sufficient accuracy, and we need to consider the possibility that there…
In the macroscopic gravity approach to the averaging problem in cosmology, the Einstein field equations on cosmological scales are modified by appropriate gravitational correlation terms. We study the averaging problem within the class of…
We study the impact of cosmic inhomogeneities on the interpretation of SNe observations. We build an inhomogeneous universe model that can confront supernova data and yet is reasonably well compatible with the Copernican Principle. Our…
These lecture notes review the theoretical problems associated with coarse-graining the observed inhomogeneous structure of the universe at late epochs, of describing average cosmic evolution in the presence of growing inhomogeneity, and of…
The strong equivalence principle is extended in application to averaged dynamical fields in cosmology to include the role of the average density in the determination of inertial frames. The resulting cosmological equivalence principle is…
There are not many tools to quantitatively monitor the emergence of classical geometric features from a quantum spacetime, whose microscopic structure may be a highly quantum-fluctuating "spacetime foam". To improve this situation, we…
It is shown that the homogeneous and isotropic Universe is spatially flat in the limit which takes into account the moments of infinitely large orders of probabilistic distribution of a scale factor with respect to its mean value in the…
Dark energy is now one of the most important and topical problems in cosmology. The first step to reveal its nature is to detect the evolution of dark energy or to prove beyond doubt that the cosmological constant is indeed constant.…
A non-trivial spatial topology of the Universe is a potentially observable attribute, which can be probed through the circles-in-the-sky for all locally homogeneous and isotropic universes with no assumptions on the cosmological parameters.…
The quantum model of homogeneous and isotropic universe filled with the uniform scalar field is considered. This model predicts effective inverse square-law dependence of the mean total energy density <\rho> on the expectation value of…
Using the exact Lemaitre-Bondi-Tolman solution with a non-vanishing cosmological constant $\Lambda$, we investigate how the presence of a local spherically-symmetric inhomogeneity can affect apparent cosmological observables, such as the…
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…
The homogeneous expansion history H(z) of our universe measures only kinematic variables, but cannot fix the underlying dynamics driving the recent acceleration: cosmographic measurements of the homogeneous universe, are consistent with…
Requiring all massless elementary fields to have conformal scaling symmetry removes a conflict between gravitational theory and the quantum theory of elementary particles and fields. Extending this postulate to the scalar field of the Higgs…
Cosmography, as an integral branch of cosmology, strives to characterize the Universe without relying on pre-determined cosmological models. This model-independent approach utilizes Taylor series expansions around the current epoch,…
We discuss the relation between `bare' cosmological parameters as the true spatial average characteristics that determine the cosmological model, and the parameters interpreted by observers with a `Friedmannian bias', i.e., within a…
We explore the possibility that the entire departure of galactic rotational velocities from their luminous Newtonian expectation be cosmological in origin, and show that within the framework of conformal gravity (but not Einstein gravity…
In this thesis we investigate cosmological models more general than the isotropic and homogeneous Friedmann-Lemaitre models. We focus on cosmologies with one spatial degree of freedom, whose matter content consists of a perfect fluid and…
Recent observations of high-redshift supernovae seem to suggest that the global geometry of the Universe may be affected by a `cosmological constant', which acts to accelerate the expansion rate with time. But these data by themselves still…