Related papers: A primer on problems and prospects of dark energy

We discuss the motivation for high accuracy relativistic gravitational experiments in the Solar System and complementary cosmological tests. We focus our attention on the issue of distinguishing a generic scalar-theory of gravity as the…

The discovery of the acceleration of the rate of expansion of the Universe fosters new explorations of the behavior of gravitation theories in the cosmological context. Either the GR framework is valid but a cosmic component with a negative…

The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark energy. Yet the underlying cause of…

We review some modified gravity models which describe the gravitational dark energy and the possibility of cosmic speed-up. The new consistent version of such theory which contains inverse and HD curvature terms as well as new type of…

These lectures have been given to particle physicists, mostly experimentalists and very briefly and at a pedestrian level review the problems of dark matter. The content of the lectures is the following: 1. Introduction. 2. Cosmological…

We outline a dynamical dark energy scenario whose signatures may be simultaneously tested by astronomical observations and laboratory experiments. The dark energy is a field with slightly sub-gravitational couplings to matter, a logarithmic…

Attractor solutions that give dynamical reasons for dark energy to act like the cosmological constant, or behavior close to it, are interesting possibilities to explain cosmic acceleration. Coupling the scalar field to matter or to gravity…

The accelerated expansion of the Universe is one of the main discoveries of the past decades, indicating the presence of an unknown component: the dark energy. Evidence of its presence is being gathered by a succession of observational…

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…

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…

The dynamical analysis for coupled dark energy with dark matter is presented, where a complex scalar field is taken into account and it is considered in the presence of a barothropic fluid. We consider three dark energy candidates:…

The mysterious `dark energy' needed to explain the current observations, poses a serious confrontation between fundamental physics and cosmology. The present crisis may be an outcome of the (so far untested) prediction of the general theory…

I consider some of the issues we face in trying to understand dark energy. Huge fluctuations in the unknown dark energy equation of state can be hidden in distance data, so I argue that model-independent tests which signal if the…

Below scales of about 100/h Mpc our universe displays a complex inhomogeneous structure dominated by voids, with clusters of galaxies in sheets and filaments. The coincidence that cosmic expansion appears to start accelerating at the epoch…

Observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. Theoretical understanding of this component (`dark energy'), which is driving an accelerated expansion of…

All observational evidence for dark matter and dark energy is so far exclusively gravitational. Hence, the dark sector may be equivalently described by a theory of the spacetime metric whose dynamics is affected by interactions with an…

The problem of explaining the acceleration of the expansion of the universe and the observational and theoretical difficulties associated with dark matter and dark energy are discussed. The possibility that Einstein gravity does not…

In this work we review briefly the origin and history of the cosmological constant and its recent reincarnation in the form of the dark energy component of the universe. We also comment on the fundamental problems associated to its…

We expand the dynamical systems investigation of cosmological scalar fields characterised by kinetic corrections presented in [N. Tamanini, Phys. Rev. D 89 (2014) 083521]. In particular we do not restrict the analysis to exponential…

The dominance of dark energy in the universe has necessitated the introduction of a repulsive gravity source to make q0 negative. The models for dark energy range from a simple lambda-term to quintessence, Chaplygin gas, etc. We look at the…