Related papers: Conceptual Problems in Cosmology
The cosmological principle says that the Universe is spatially homogeneous and isotropic. It predicts, among other phenomena, the cosmic redshift of light and the Hubble law. Nevertheless, the existence of structure in the Universe violates…
The status of quantum cosmologies as testable models of the early universe is assessed in the context of inflation. While traditional Wheeler-DeWitt quantization is unable to produce sizable effects in the cosmic microwave background, the…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
Cosmological models often contain scalar fields, which can acquire global nonzero expectation values that change with the comoving time. Among the possible consequences of these scalar-field backgrounds, an accelerated cosmological…
In physical theories, boundary or initial conditions play the role of selecting special situations which can be described by a theory with its general laws. Cosmology has long been suspected to be different in that its fundamental theory…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
Cosmography can be considered as a sort of a model-independent approach to tackle the dark energy/modified gravity problem. In this review, the success and the shortcomings of the $\Lambda$CDM model, based on General Relativity and standard…
The current cosmic time evolution of the Universe is described by the General Relativity theory when a cosmological principle is considered under a flat space time landscape. The set of known as Friedmann equations, contain the principles…
Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a…
In this concise, albeit subjective review of structure formation, I shall introduce the cosmological standard model and its theoretical and observational underpinnings. I will focus on recent results and current issues in theoretical…
Considering the Friedmann--Lema\^{i}tre--Robertson--Walker (FLRW) metric and the Einstein scalar field system as an underlying gravitational model to construct fractional cosmological models has interesting implications in both classical…
Modern observations based on general relativity indicate that the spatial geometry of the expanding, large-scale Universe is very nearly Euclidean. This basic empirical fact is at the core of the so-called "flatness problem", which is…
In this study, by revisiting the quantum interpretation of the cosmological constant, we introduce its formal representation within standard General Relativity. Examining its behavior in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime reveals a…
The paradigm of \Lambda CDM cosmology works impressively well and with the concept of inflation it explains the universe after the time of decoupling. However there are still a few concerns; after much effort there is no detection of dark…
A common approach in physics and mathematics is to extend and modify theories and frameworks by considering what is often described as a `natural' extension or modification by including higher-order terms or by introducing other…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
The era of precision cosmology has allowed us to accurately determine many important cosmological parameters, in particular via the CMB. Confronting Loop Quantum Cosmology with these observations provides us with a powerful test of the…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
Did the universe have a beginning or does it exist forever, i.e. is it eternal at least in relation to the past? This fundamental question was a main topic in ancient philosophy of nature and the Middle Ages. Philosophically it was more or…