Related papers: Inhomogeneous structure formation may alleviate ne…
We discuss the physics of backreaction-driven accelerated expansion. Using the exact equations for the behaviour of averages in dust universes, we explain how large-scale smoothness does not imply that the effect of inhomogeneity and…
A new method is proposed for modelling spherically symmetric inhomogeneities in the Universe. The inhomogeneities have finite size and are compensated, so they do not exert any measurable gravitational force beyond their boundary. The…
We construct high-precision models of the Universe that contain radiation, a cosmological constant, and periodically distributed inhomogeneous matter. The density contrasts in these models are allowed to be highly non-linear, and the…
Gravitational waves are propagating undulations in the spacetime fabric, which interact very weakly with their environment. In cosmology, gravitational-wave distortions are produced by most of the inflationary scenarios and their…
In this contribution I wish to address the question whether, and how, the global cosmological expansion influences local physics. I argue that a pseudo Newtonian picture can be quite accurate if "expansion" is taken to be an attribute of…
It is commonly stated that we have entered the era of precision cosmology in which a number of important observations have reached a degree of precision, and a level of agreement with theory, that is comparable with many Earth-based physics…
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…
We examine the possibility of "soft cosmology", namely small deviations from the usual framework due to the effective appearance of soft-matter properties in the Universe sectors. One effect of such a case would be the dark energy to…
The semiclassical gravity describes gravitational back-reactions of the classical spacetime interacting with quantum matter fields but the quantum effects on the background is formally defined as higher derivative curvatures. These induce…
Recent observations of high redshift Supernovae at lower than expected value of the Hubble constant, widely interpreted as an evidence for accelerating expansion of the Universe, could alternatively be explained assuming a hyperbolic…
We present a model of an inhomogeneous universe that leads to accelerated expansion after taking spatial averaging. The model universe is the Tolman-Bondi solution of the Einstein equation and contains both a region with positive spatial…
The properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation must be different in flat, positively and negatively curved universes. This fact leads to a direct way of determining the geometry of the universe. The signature of the…
It is known than the inclusion of spatial curvature can modify the evolution of matter perturbations and affect the Large Scale Structure (LSS) formation. We quantify the effects of the non-zero space curvature in terms of LSS formation for…
These lectures deal with our current knowledge of the matter distribution in the universe, focusing on how this is studied via the large-scale structure seen in galaxy surveys. We first assemble the necessary basics needed to understand the…
Nonlinear gravitational instability is a crucial way to comprehend the clustering of matter and the formation of nonlinear structures in both the Universe and stellar systems. However, with the exception of a few exact particular solutions…
In addition to shear and vorticity a homogeneous background may also exhibit anisotropic curvature. Here a class of spacetimes is shown to exist where the anisotropy is solely of the latter type, and the shear-free condition is supported by…
A non-singular cosmology is derived in modified gravity (MOG) with a varying gravitational coupling strength $G(t)=G_N\xi(t)$. Assuming that the curvature $k$, the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ and $\rho$ vanish at $t=0$, we obtain a…
The role of global topology in the dynamics of the Universe is poorly understood. Along with observational programmes for determining the topology of the Universe, some small theoretical steps have recently been made. Heuristic…
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…
We study the impact of the expansion of the universe on a broad class of objects, including black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and others. Using metrics that incorporate primordial inhomogeneities, the effects of a hypothetical…