Related papers: Why $w \ne -1$? Anthropic Selection in a $\Lambda$…
The dark energy component of the universe is often interpreted either in terms of a cosmological constant or as a scalar field. A generic feature of the scalar field models is that the equation of state parameter w= P/rho for the dark…
The cosmic acceleration is one of the most significant cosmological discoveries over the last century. Following the more accurate data a more dramatic result appears: the recent analysis of the observation data (especially from SNe Ia)…
The presence of a topological susceptibility in the electroweak sector of the Standard Model motivates the existence of a good quality weak axion $a_W$, associated with the spontaneous breaking of $B\!+\!L$. Its anomalous couplings and tiny…
We study the stochastic axion dark matter scenario in the axion landscape, where one of the axions is light and stable and therefore explains dark matter. If the axion mass at the potential is a typical value of the curvature along the…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
We investigate the axion dark matter scenario (ADM), in which axions account for all of the dark matter in the Universe, in light of the most recent cosmological data. In particular, we use the Planck temperature data, complemented by WMAP…
Precision cosmological data hint that a dark energy with equation of state $w = P/\rho < -1$ and hence dubious stability is viable. Here we discuss for any $w$ nucleation from $\Lambda > 0$ to $\Lambda = 0$ in a first-order phase…
Axions are hypothetical particles that may explain the observed dark matter (DM) density and the non-observation of a neutron electric dipole moment. An increasing number of axion laboratory searches are underway worldwide, but these…
We carry out a Bayesian model selection analysis of different dark energy parametrizations using the recent luminosity distance data of high redshift supernovae from Riess et al. 2007 and from the new ESSENCE Supernova Survey. Including…
The cosmological constant, which was introduced by Einstein a century ago to allow for a static universe, experienced a revival two decades ago under the label dark energy as a parameter to model the observed accelerated expansion of the…
We critically examine the state of current constraints on the dark energy (DE) equation of state (EoS) $w$. Our study is motivated by the observation that, while broadly consistent with the cosmological constant value $w=-1$, several…
The current concordance model of cosmology is dominated by two mysterious ingredients: dark matter and dark energy. In this paper, we explore the possibility that, in fact, there exist two dark-energy components: the cosmological constant…
Using several cosmological observations, i.e. the cosmic microwave background anisotropies (WMAP), the weak gravitational lensing (CFHTLS), the measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations (SDSS+WiggleZ), the most recent observational…
Several models have been proposed to explain the dark energy that is causing universe expansion to accelerate. Here the acceleration predicted by the Holographic Dark Information Energy (HDIE) model is compared to the acceleration that…
Since the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe, the constraints on the equation of state $w_\text{DE}$ of dark energy, the stress-energy component responsible for the acceleration, have tightened significantly. These…
A simple yet compelling physical picture is proposed for the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang. The proposal leads to predictions, from first-principles with high precision, for the values of the Hubble constant,…
Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that…
If there are a plethora of axions in nature, they may have a complicated potential and create an axion landscape. We study a possibility that one of the axions is so light that it is cosmologically stable, explaining the observed dark…
Axions, grand unification, and string theory are each compelling extensions of the Standard Model. We show that combining these frameworks imposes strong constraints on the QCD axion mass. Using unitarity arguments and explicit string…
We present cosmological parameter constraints on flat cosmologies dominated by dark energy using various cosmological data including the recent Archeops angular power spectrum measurements. A likelihood analysis of the existing Cosmic…