Related papers: Perturbations and the Future Conformal Boundary
Current observations do not rule out the possibility that the Universe might end up in an abrupt event. Different such scenarios may be explored through suitable parameterizations of the dark energy and then confronted to cosmological…
Current astronomical observations are successfully explained by the present cosmological paradigm based on the concordance model ($\Lambda_0$CDM + Inflation). However, such a scenario is composed of a heterogeneous mix of ingredients for…
The success of present and future cosmological studies is tied to the ability to detect discrepancies in complex data sets within the framework of a cosmological model. Tensions caused by the presence of unknown systematic effects need to…
The detection of a time variation of the angle between two distant sources would reveal an anisotropic expansion of the Universe. We study this effect of "cosmic parallax" within the "ellipsoidal universe" model, namely a particular…
We connect a possible solution for the ``cosmological constant problem'' to the existence of a (postulated) conformal fixed point in a fundamental theory. The resulting cosmology leads to quintessence, where the present acceleration of the…
Gravitation is described in the context of a dilatonic theory that is conformally related to general relativity. All dimensionless ratios of fundamental dimensional quantities, e.g. particle masses and the Planck mass, as well as the…
We develop a new approach to building cosmological models, in which small pieces of perturbed Minkowski space are joined together at reflection-symmetric boundaries in order to form a global, dynamical space-time. Each piece of this…
One signature of an expanding universe is the time-variation of the cosmological abundances of its different components. For example, a radiation-dominated universe inevitably gives way to a matter-dominated universe, and critical moments…
We review the free parameters in the concordance cosmology, and those which might be added to this set as the quality of astrophysical data improves. Most concordance parameters encode information about otherwise unexplored aspects of high…
We study some cosmological constraints on the two phenomenological models of oscillating dark energy. In these scenarios, the equation of state of dark energy varies periodically and may provide a way to unify the early acceleration…
In this work we explore a model of the universe in which dark energy is modelled explicitely with both a dynamical quintessence field (with a double exponential self-interaction potential) and a cosmological constant. For a given region of…
Current evidence suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero, or that we live in an open universe. We examine the implications for the future under these assumptions, and find that they are striking. If the Universe is cosmological…
We study the consequences of the $f(R/\Box)$ gravity models for the Solar system and the large scale structure of the universe. The spherically symmetric solutions can be used to obtain bounds on the constant and the linear parts of the…
We investigate a string-inspired dark energy scenario featuring a scalar field with a coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Such coupling can trigger the onset of late dark energy domination after a scaling matter era. The universe may…
Much of modern cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous on sufficiently large scales, but it remains worthwhile to examine cosmological models that violate this principle…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is extended to spacetimes displaying isotropic expansion but anisotropic curvature. The perturbed Einstein equation and Boltzmann equations for massless and massive particles are derived in a general…
We define a universe as the contents of a spacetime box with comoving walls, large enough to contain essentially all phenomena that can be conceivably measured. The initial time is taken as the epoch when the lowest CMB modes undergo…
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…
It has long been a primary objective of cosmology to understand the apparent isotropy in our universe and to provide a mathematical formulation for its evolution. A school of thought for its explanation is quiescent cosmology, which already…
Cosmological perturbations in an expanding universe back-react on the space-time in which they propagate. Calculations to lowest non-vanishing order in perturbation theory indicate that super-Hubble-scale fluctuations act as a negative and…