Related papers: Do we live in a "Dirac-Milne" universe?
WMAP and Planck open the way to unprecedented Big Bang phenomenology, potentially allowing to test the standard Big Bang model as well as less conventional approaches including noncyclic pre-Big Bang cosmologies that would incorporate a new…
We discuss variants of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) dominated cosmological models that give good agreement with a range of observations. We consider models with hot dark matter, tilt, $\Omega < 1$, or a cosmological constant. We also discuss the…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
Despite the fact that the mean matter density of the universe has been measured to an accuracy of a few percent within the standard $\Lambda$CDM paradigm, its median density is not known even to order of magnitude. Typical points lie in…
One of the principal discoveries in modern cosmology is that standard model particles (including baryons, leptons and photons) together comprise only 5% of the mass-energy budget of the Universe. The remaining 95% consists of dark energy…
We find that current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy data strongly constrain the mean spatial curvature of the Universe to be near zero, or, equivalently, the total energy density to be near critical-as predicted by inflation.…
The standard cosmological model, based on Cold Dark Matter and Dark Energy ({\Lambda}CDM), faces several challenges. Among these is the need to adjust the scenario to account for he presence of vast voids in the large-scale structure of the…
The cosmic microwave background radiation allows us to measure both the geometry and topology of the universe. It has been argued that the COBE-DMR data already rule out models that are multiply connected on scales smaller than the particle…
Assuming that observers located inside the Universe measure a time flow which is different from the time appearing in the Friedmann-Lemaitre equation, and determining this time flow such that the Universe always appears flat to these…
Widening cracks are appearing in the $\Lambda$CDM model and it is becoming increasingly clear that the standard cosmological model struggles to describe the full expansion history of the Universe as revealed by the Cosmic Microwave…
Dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the observable Universe. Yet the physical nature of these two phenomena remains a mystery. Einstein suggested a long-forgotten solution: gravitationally repulsive negative masses, which drive…
The standard model of cosmology, {\Lambda}CDM, is the simplest model that matches the current observations, but it relies on two hypothetical components, to wit, dark matter and dark energy. Future galaxy surveys and cosmic microwave…
Arguably our current cosmological paradigm, the so-called $\Lambda$CDM `concordance model', faces an existential crisis. This has largely been brought about by its reliance on the twin concepts of dark matter and dark energy, and the…
Our standard model of the Universe predicts the distribution of dark matter to $1\%$ at the scales needed for upcoming experiments, yet our predictions for how the luminous matter -- which has interactions besides gravity -- is distributed…
Feebly interacting thermal relics are promising dark matter candidates. Among them, scenarios of inelastic Dark Matter evade direct detection by suppressed elastic scattering off atomic nuclei. We introduce inelastic Dirac Dark Matter, a…
The concordance model of cosmology, LCDM, provides a satisfactory description of the evolution of the universe and the growth of large scale structure. Despite considerable effort, this model does not at present provide a satisfactory…
We discuss cosmological inference from galaxy surveys, the X-Ray Background (XRB) and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We assume a family of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models in a spatially flat universe with an initially scale-invariant…
The evidence for the existence of dark matter in the universe is reviewed. A general picture emerges, where both baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter is needed to explain current observations. In particular, a wealth of observational…
These lectures describe how the Standard Model of cosmology ($\Lambda$CDM) has developped, based on observational facts but also on ideas formed in the context of the theory of fundamental interactions, both gravitational and…
Recent astronomical observations indicate that the Universe is presently almost flat and undergoing a period of accelerated expansion. Basing on Einstein's general relativity all these observations can be explained by the hypothesis of a…