Related papers: Testing the Copernican principle by constraining s…
The conceptual difficulties associated with a cosmological constant have led to the investigation of alternative models in which the equation of state parameter, $w=p/\rho$, of the dark energy evolves with time. We show that combining the…
The homogeneous and isotropic radiation dominated universe, following the inflationary stage, is expressed as a spherically symmetric and inhomogeneous spacetime upon a power law type conformal transformation of the null (cosmological)…
Recently, a supersymmetric model of dark energy coupled to cold dark matter, the supersymmetron, has been proposed. In the absence of cold dark matter, the supersymmetron field converges to a supersymmetric minimum with a vanishing…
The standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem is based on one critical assumption---the spacetime is homogeneous and isotropic, which is true only on cosmological scales. However, this problem is caused by extremely small…
New physics in the early Universe could lead to parity-violation in the late Universe, sourcing statistics whose sign changes under point reflection. The best constraints on such phenomena have come from the Planck temperature fluctuations;…
The Cosmological Principle in it's various versions states that: (i) the Galaxy does not occupy a particular position, (ii) the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This statement does not agree with the recent astronomical observations…
Coherent interaction of a quantum system with environment usually induces quantum decoherence. However, remarkably, in certain configurations the coherent system-environment coupling can be simultaneously explored to engineer a specific…
With the recent measurement of full sky cosmic microwave background polarization from WMAP, key cosmological degeneracies have been broken, allowing tighter constraints to be placed on cosmological parameters inferred assuming a standard…
Cosmography is a model-independent phenomenological approach to observational cosmology, relying on Taylor series expansions of physical quantities as a function of the cosmological redshift or other analogous variables. A recent work…
In this communication, we consider a wide class of extensions to General Relativity that break explicitly the Einstein Equivalence Principle by introducing a multiplicative coupling between a scalar field and the electromagnetic Lagrangian.…
Dark matter is poorly constrained by direct detection experiments at masses below 1 MeV. This is an important target for the next generation of experiments, and several methods have been proposed to probe this mass range. One class of such…
Cosmological consequences of a string-motivated dark energy scenario featuring a scalar field coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant are investigated. We study the evolution of the universe in such a model, identifying its key properties.…
The Einstein-Aether theory provides a simple, dynamical mechanism for breaking Lorentz invariance. It does so within a generally covariant context and may emerge from quantum effects in more fundamental theories. The theory leads to a…
We update constraints on cosmic opacity by combining recent SN Type Ia data compilation with the latest measurements of the Hubble expansion at redshifts between 0 and 2. The new constraint on the parameter $\epsilon$ parametrising…
We compute the shift in the epoch of matter-radiation equality due to the possible existence of a different statistical (non-extensive) background. The shift is mainly caused by a different neutrino-photon temperature ratio. We then…
We investigate a link between the running of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ and a time evolving scalar dark energy field. Employing a versatile parameterization for the equation of state, we exhaustively cover the space of dark energy…
The precision era of multi-messenger astronomy, together with modern astrophysical, cosmological, and gravitational wave observations, increasingly points toward the existence of a ``dark" sector that cannot be explained within the…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
The aim of this paper is to derive limits on various forms of ``new physics'' using atomic experimental data. Interactions with dark energy and dark matter fields can lead to space-time variations of fundamental constants, which can be…
The possibility that we live in a special place in the universe, close to the center of a large, radially inhomogeneous void, has attracted attention recently as an alternative to dark energy or modified gravity to explain the accelerating…