Related papers: Theoretical and numerical perspectives on cosmic d…
Recent calculations using non-linear relativistic cosmological perturbation theory show biases in the mean luminosity distance and distance modulus at low redshift. We show that these effects may be understood very simply as a…
The cosmological dispersion measure (DM) as a function of redshift, derived from localized fast radio bursts (FRBs), has been used as a tool for constraining the cosmic ionized fraction and cosmological parameters. For these purposes, the…
In this work we present the first results from a new ray-tracing tool to calculate cosmological distances in the context of fully nonlinear general relativity. We use this tool to study the ability of the general cosmographic representation…
We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…
We consider the form of Hubble diagrams that would be constructed by observers in universes that are homogeneous but anisotropic, when averaged over suitably large length-scales. This is achieved by ray-tracing in different directions on…
In this paper we discuss the effect of local inhomogeneities on the global expansion of nearly FLRW universes, in a perturbative setting. We derive a generic linearized averaging operation for metric perturbations from basic assumptions,…
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…
Smoothing over structures in general relativity leads to a renormalisation of the background, and potentially many other effects which are poorly understood. Observables such as the distance-redshift relation when averaged on the sky do not…
In order to quantitatively test the ability of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies to correctly describe observations of the large scale properties of the Universe, we introduce a smoothed template metric corresponding to a constant spatial…
Whilst the underlying assumption of the Friedman-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmological model is that matter is homogeneously distributed throughout the universe, gravitational influences over the life of the universe have resulted…
We give distance--redshift relations in terms of elliptic integrals for three different mass distributions of the Friedmann-Lema\^\i tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology. These models are dynamically pressure free FLRW on large scales but,…
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…
We challenge the widely held belief that the cosmological principle is an obvious consequence of the observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, combined with the Copernican principle. We perform a detailed analysis of a…
The Universe is not completely homogeneous. Even if it is sufficiently so on large scales, it is very inhomogeneous at small scales, and this has an effect on light propagation, so that the distance as a function of redshift, which in many…
The Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales, so on those scales it is usually modelled as a Friedmann-Lema\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) space-time. The non-linearity of the Einstein field equations raises concern over…
We consider a cosmology in which a spherically symmetric large scale inhomogeneous enhancement or a void are described by an inhomogeneous metric and Einstein's gravitational equations. For a flat matter dominated universe the inhomogeneous…
We examine the properties of a recently proposed observationally viable alternative to homogeneous cosmology with smooth dark energy, the timescape cosmology. In the timescape model cosmic acceleration is realized as an apparent effect…
Most cosmological models studied today are based on the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy. Observationally one can find evidence that supports these assumptions on very large scales, the strongest being the almost isotropy of the…
We present a general gauge invariant formalism for defining cosmological averages that are relevant for observations based on light-like signals. Such averages involve either null hypersurfaces corresponding to a family of past light-cones…
With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost…