Related papers: Contracting Cosmologies and the Swampland
The holographic bound states that the entropy in a region cannot exceed one quarter of the area (in Planck units) of the bounding surface. A version of the holographic principle that can be applied to cosmological spacetimes has recently…
In many cases a nonlinear scalar field with potential $V$ can lead to accelerated expansion in cosmological models. This paper contains mathematical results on this subject for homogeneous spacetimes. It is shown that, under the assumption…
We consider a class of cosmological models in which the universe is filled with a (non-electric) charge density that repels itself by means of a force carried by a vector boson with a tiny mass. When the vector's mass depends upon other…
We show that cosmological observables can constrain the topology of the compact additional dimensions predicted by string theory. To do this, we develop a general strategy for relating cosmological observables to the microscopic parameters…
It was recently pointed out that the cosmological constant (even metastable one) belongs to the so-called "swampland" and hence cannot be obtained as the low-energy limit of string theory that requires $|\nabla V| > c V$. If true, the dark…
Recently a covariant entropy conjecture has been proposed for dynamical horizons. We apply this conjecture to concordance cosmological models, namely, those cosmological models filled with perfect fluids, in the presence of a positive…
We explore a new type of entropic mechanism for generating density perturbations in a contracting phase in which there are two scalar fields, but only one has a steep negative potential. This first field dominates the energy density and is…
We present the constraints on the Quintessence scalar field model from the observational data of the variation of the fine structure constant obtained from Keck and VLT telescopes. Within the theoretical frame proposed by Bekenstein, the…
In this essay, we present a new understanding of the cosmological constant problem, built upon the realization that the vacuum energy density can be expressed in terms of a phase space volume. We introduce a UV-IR regularization which…
A cosmic potential which can relax the vacuum energy is proposed in a framework of scalar-tensor gravity. In the phase of the gravity scalar field around the evolution with an approximate emergent conformal symmetry, we have obtained a set…
We study the constraints on the dark energy model with constant equation of state parameter $w=p/\rho$ and the holographic dark energy model by using the weak gravity conjecture. The combination of weak gravity conjecture and the…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
Combining intervals of ekpyrotic (ultra-slow) contraction with a (non-singular) classical bounce naturally leads to a novel cyclic theory of the universe in which the Hubble parameter, energy density and temperature oscillate periodically,…
We consider a cosmology in which the final stage of the Universe is neither accelerating nor decelerating, but approaches an asymptotic state where the scale factor becomes a constant value. In order to achieve this, we first bring in a…
Lord Kelvin believed that the electromagnetic aether must also generate gravity. Presently, we have no methods to determine the density of the electromagnetic aether, or we say the $\Omega(1)$ substratum. Thus, we also suppose that vacuum…
We study the spherical collapse model in dark energy cosmologies, in which dark energy is modelled as a minimally coupled scalar field. We first follow the standard assumption that dark energy does not cluster on the scales of interest.…
A homogeneous and isotropic quantum cosmological system (universe) initially filled with a uniform scalar field that has a potential in the power law representation is considered. Depending on the epoch, this scalar field yields barotropic…
In the framework of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, we construct a new kind of cosmological model that conflates inflation and ekpyrosis. During a phase of conflation, the universe undergoes accelerated expansion, but with crucial…
In the ekpyrotic scenario the Universe is initially collapsing, the energy density coming from a scalar field with a negative exponential potential. On the basis of a calculation ignoring the gravitational back-reaction the authors of the…
Possible connections between quantum entanglement and cosmological eras are considered. In particular, assuming that two epochs are each other entangled, by measuring the entanglement degree, it is possible to recover dynamical properties…