Related papers: How dominant is the vacuum?
It is now well accepted that both Dark Matter and Dark Energy are required in any successful cosmological model. Although there is ample evidence that both Dark components are necessary, the conventional theories make no prediction for the…
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
The Cosmological Constant Lambda, a concept introduced by Einstein in 1917, has been with us ever since in different variants and incarnations, including the broader concept of Dark Energy. Current observations are consistent with a value…
Non-baryonic, or "dark," matter is believed to be a major component of the total mass budget of the universe. We review the candidates for particle dark matter and discuss the prospects for direct detection (via interaction of dark matter…
A cosmological constant, Lambda, is the most natural candidate to explain the origin of the dark energy (DE) component in the Universe. However, due to experimental evidence that the equation of state (EOS) of the DE could be evolving with…
In an expanding universe the vacuum energy density \rho_{\Lambda} is expected to be a dynamical quantity. In quantum field theory in curved space-time \rho_{\Lambda} should exhibit a slow evolution, determined by the expansion rate of the…
We investigate quintessence cosmologies with a matter component consisting of particles with an increasing mass. While negligible in early cosmology, the appearance of a growing matter component has stopped the evolution of the cosmon field…
The distribution of the non-luminous matter in galaxies of different luminosity and Hubble type is much more than a proof of the existence of dark particles governing the structures of the Universe. Here, we will review the complex but…
The discrepancy between dynamical mass measures of objects such as galaxies and the observed distribution of luminous matter in the universe is typically explained by invoking an unseen ``dark matter'' component. Dark matter must…
About one-fourth of the universe is thought to consist of dark matter. Yet there is no clear understanding about the nature of these particles. Commonly discussed dark matter candidates includes the so called WIMPs or weakly interacting…
Our standard model of the Universe predicts the distribution of dark matter to $1\%$ at the scales needed for upcoming experiments, yet our predictions for how the luminous matter -- which has interactions besides gravity -- is distributed…
Modern cosmology suggests that the Universe contains two dark components -- dark matter and dark energy -- both unkown in laboratory physics and both lacking direct evidence. Alternatively, a unified dark sector, described by a single…
The standard model of cosmology suggests the existence of two components, "dark matter" and "dark energy", which determine the fate of the Universe. Their nature is still under investigation, and no direct proof of their existences has…
In this talk I summarize the topics addressed during the conference. We have discussed the most relevant cosmological observations of the last say 10 years and their implications for our understanding of the Universe. My finding throughout…
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…
Recent attempts to explain the dark matter and energy content of the universe have involved some radical extensions of standard physics, including quintessence, phantom energy, additional space dimensions and variations in the speed of…
Assuming existence of (very) heavy fourth generation of quarks and antiquarks we argue that antibaryon composed of the three heavy antiquarks can be light, stable and invisible, hence a good candidate for the Dark matter particle. Such…
Strangeon is proposed to be the constituent of bulk strong matter, as an analogy of nucleon for an atomic nucleus. The nature of both nucleon matter (2 quark flavors, u and d) and strangeon matter (3 flavors, u, d and s) is controlled by…
Experimental evidence over a number of recent years has shown the density parameter of the universe omega converging to the critical value of 1, which defines a flat, Euclidean universe. No such calculations have defined a critical value…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance physics, corresponding to an energy at least as large as the Fermi scale. The…