Related papers: Do we need soft cosmology?
These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure…
A simple way to accommodate dark matter is to postulate the existence of a hidden sector. That is, a set of new particles and forces interacting with the known particles predominantly via gravity. In general this leads to a large set of…
We investigate various dark energy models by taking into account the thermal effects induced from Hawking radiation on the apparent horizon of the Universe, for example near a finite-time future singularity. If the dark energy density…
Motivated in part by string theory, we consider a modification of the LambdaCDM cosmological model in which the dark matter has a long-range scalar force screened by light particles. Scalar forces can have interesting effects on structure…
The cosmographic technique is a powerful model-independent tool for distinguishing between competing cosmological scenarios. The key strengths and weaknesses of standard cosmography are discussed in view of healing the convergence problem…
In this review, I outline the use of galaxy correlations to constrain cosmological parameters. As with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the density of dark and baryonic matter imprints important scales on the fluctuations of matter…
We examine the embedding of dark energy in high energy models based upon supergravity and extend the usual phenomenological setting comprising an observable sector and a hidden supersymmetry breaking sector by including a third sector…
Cosmology now provides unambiguous, quantitative evidence for new particle physics. I discuss the implications of cosmology for supersymmetry and vice versa. Topics include: motivations for supersymmetry; supersymmetry breaking; dark…
The two dark sectors of the universe - dark matter and dark energy - may interact with each other. Background and linear density perturbation evolution equations are developed for a generic coupling. We then establish the general conditions…
While the standard model accurately describes data at the electroweak scale without inclusion of gravity, beyond the standard model physics is increasingly intertwined with gravitational phenomena and cosmology. Thus gravity mediated…
If supersymmetry exists at any scale, regardless of whether it is restored around the weak scale, it may be a good symmetry of the dark sector, enforcing a degeneracy between its lowest lying fermions and bosons. We explore the implications…
We show that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic field on cosmological scales generates an effective cosmological constant which can account for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Primordial electromagnetic quantum…
The homogeneous expansion history H(z) of our universe measures only kinematic variables, but cannot fix the underlying dynamics driving the recent acceleration: cosmographic measurements of the homogeneous universe, are consistent with…
Models in which dark energy interacts with dark matter have been proposed in the literature to help explain why dark energy should only come to dominate in recent times. In this paper, we present a dynamical framework to calculate…
We investigate the possibility of a dark energy component that is scaling with epochs. A phenomenological model is introduced whose energy density depends on the redshift in such a way that a smooth transition among the three dominant…
A range of cosmological observations demonstrate an accelerated expansion of the Universe, and the most likely explanation of this phenomenon is a cosmological constant. Given the importance of understanding the underlying physics, it is…
The energy density of the universe today may be dominated by the vacuum energy of a slowly rolling scalar field. Making a quantum expansion around such a time dependent solution is found to break fundamental symmetries of quantum field…
It has been argued that a Universe governed by Eddington-Born-Infeld gravity can be compatible with current cosmological constraints. The extra fields introduced in this theory can behave both as dark matter and dark energy, unifying the…
We review dark energy models which can present non-negligible fluctuations on scales smaller than Hubble radius. Both linear and nonlinear evolutions of dark energy fluctuations are discussed. The linear evolution has a well-established…
Dark matter has been introduced to explain many independent gravitational effects at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. This review describes the…