Related papers: Cosmic structure, averaging and dark energy
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…
In the timescape scenario cosmic acceleration is understand as an apparent effect, due to gravitational energy gradients that grow when spatial curvature gradients become significant with the nonlinear growth of cosmic structure. This…
There is now strong evidence that the current energy density of the Universe is dominated by dark energy with an equation of state w<-1/3, which is causing accelerated expansion. The build-up of structure within such Universes is subject to…
The standard model of cosmology assumes that the Universe can be described to hover around a homogeneous-isotropic solution of Einstein's general theory of relativity. This description needs (sometimes hidden) hypotheses that restrict the…
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…
Cosmic acceleration is explained quantitatively, purely in general relativity, as an apparent effect due to quasilocal gravitational energy differences that arise in the decoupling of bound systems from the global expansion of the universe.…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
A wide range of large scale observations hint towards possible modifications on the standard cosmological model which is based on a homogeneous and isotropic universe with a small cosmological constant and matter. These observations, also…
Cosmic acceleration is explained quantitatively, as an apparent effect due to gravitational energy differences that arise in the decoupling of bound systems from the global expansion of the universe. "Dark energy" is a misidentification of…
This article looks at how inhomogeneous spacetime models may be significant for cosmology. First it looks at how the averaging process may affect large scale dynamics, with backreaction effects leading to effective contributions to the…
One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is Dark Energy, which is required to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe within the standard model. But maybe one can explain the observations without introducing new physics, by…
This thesis deals with the averaging problem in cosmology, which has gained considerable interest in recent years, and is concerned with correction terms (after averaging inhomogeneities) that appear in the Einstein equations when working…
I briefly outline a new physical interpretation to the average cosmological parameters for an inhomogeneous universe with backreaction. The variance in local geometry and gravitational energy between ideal isotropic observers in bound…
A mildly inhomogeneous universe with a cosmological constant may look like it contains evolving dark energy. We show that could be the case by modelling the inhomogeneities and their effects in three different ways: as clumped matter…
If general relativity (GR) describes the expansion of the Universe, the observed cosmic acceleration implies the existence of a `dark energy'. However, while the Universe is on average homogeneous on large scales, it is inhomogeneous on…
We discuss the effect of curvature and matter inhomogeneities on the averaged scalar curvature of the present-day Universe. Motivated by studies of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies, we contemplate on the question whether it is sensible to…
It is generally assumed that on sufficiently large scales the Universe is well-described as a homogeneous, isotropic FRW cosmology with a dark energy. Does the formation of nonlinear cosmic inhomogeneities produce a significant effect on…
The currently available cosmological data yield, as a most striking result, that the expansion rate of the universe seems to be increasing at late times, contrary to the standard (zero cosmological constant) FLRW prediction. The usual…
We investigate the effect that the average backreaction of structure formation has on the dynamics of the cosmological expansion, within the concordance model. Our approach in the Poisson gauge is fully consistent up to second-order in a…
The predictions of homogeneous and isotropic cosmological models with ordinary matter and gravity are off by a factor of two in the late universe. One possible explanation is the known breakdown of homogeneity and isotropy due to the…