Related papers: Is the Observable Universe Consistent with the Cos…
I review the major concordances and controversies of the meeting concerning observations. Cosmologists are nearing agreement on the global cosmological parameters of the Universe. A few parameters still have large error bars, notably…
The homogeneity of matter distribution at large scales, known as the cosmological principle, is a central assumption in the standard cosmological model. The case is testable though, thus no longer needs to be a principle. Here we perform a…
The holographic principle is studied in the context of a $n+1$ dimensional radiation dominated closed Friedman-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe. The radiation is represented by a conformal field theory with a large central charge. Following…
Observational constraints guide one forcefully to examine models in which the matter density is substantially less than critical density. Particularly noteworthy are those which are consistent with inflation. For these models, microwave…
Is the Universe (a spatial section thereof) finite or infinite? Knowing the global geometry of a Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre (FL) universe requires knowing both its curvature and its topology. A flat or hyperbolic (``open'') FL universe is {\em…
A constant-rate creation of dark particles in the late-time FLRW spacetime provides a cosmological model in accordance with precise observational tests. The matter creation backreaction implies in this context a vacuum energy density…
Nowadays, according to the observational evidences the curvature parameter of the universe is neglected and spatially flat FLRW model is on the top of interest for cosmologists. However, due to some discrepancies between $\Lambda$-CDM model…
The Copernican principle, the notion that we are not at a special location in the Universe, is one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology and its violation would invalidate the Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric,…
One of the continuing challenges in cosmology has been to determine the large-scale space-time metric from observations with a minimum of assumptions -- without, for instance, assuming that the universe is almost…
The Cosmological Principle is part of the foundation that underpins the standard model of the Universe. In the era of precision cosmology, when stress tests of the standard model are uncovering various tensions and possible anomalies, it is…
We investigate observational tests that can be used to distinguish between broad classes of cosmological models. This is achieved using curvature-consistency tests of the Friedmann-Lema\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) models, which we…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
We study some observational consequences of a recently proposed scale--dependent cosmological model for an inhomogeneous Universe. In this model the Universe is pictured as being inside a highly dense and rapidly expanding shell with the…
On small scales the observable Universe is highly inhomogeneous, with galaxies and clusters forming a complex web of voids and filaments. The optical properties of such configurations can be quite different from the perfectly smooth…
The R_h=ct Universe is a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology which, like LCDM, assumes the presence of dark energy in addition to (baryonic and non-luminous) matter and radiation. Unlike LCDM, however, it is also constrained by the…
The Hubble diagram is one of the cornerstones of observational cosmology. It is usually analysed assuming that, on average, the underlying relation between magnitude and redshift matches the prediction of a…
The two fundamental assumptions in cosmology are that the Universe is statistically homogeneous and isotropic when averaged on large scales. Given the big implication of these assumptions, there has been a lot of statistical tests carried…
Based on the cosmological principle only, the method of describing the evolution of the Universe, called cosmography, is in fact a kinematics of cosmological expansion. The effectiveness of cosmography lies in the fact that it allows, based…
We investigate isotropic and homogeneous cosmological scenarios in the scalar-tensor theory of gravity with non-minimal derivative coupling of a scalar field to the curvature given by the term $(\zeta/H_0^2) G^{\mu\nu}\nabla_\mu\phi…
The cosmological constant $\Lambda$ is a free parameter in Einstein's equations of gravity. We propose to fix its value with a boundary condition: test particles should be free when outside causal contact, e.g. at infinity. Under this…