Related papers: Testable anthropic predictions for dark energy
In this talk we present a model of the universe in which dark energy is modelled explicitely with both a dynamical quintessence field and a cosmological constant. Our results confirm the possibility of a collapsing universe (for a given…
In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable…
Observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. Theoretical understanding of this component (`dark energy'), which is driving an accelerated expansion of…
Many ambitious experiments have been proposed to constrain dark energy and detect its evolution. At present, observational constraints are consistent with a cosmological constant and there is no firm evidence for any evolution in the dark…
Some issues of the cosmological constant or dark energy are briefly reviewed. There are an increasing number of observations that constrain the equation of state of dark energy more stringently and favor the time-independent cosmological…
The traditional "explanation" for the observed acceleration of the universe is the existence of a positive cosmological constant. However, this can hardly be a truly convincing explanation, as an expanding universe is not expected to have a…
Future cosmological surveys will probe the expansion history of the universe and constrain phenomenological models of dark energy. Such models do not address the fine-tuning problem of the vacuum energy, i.e. the cosmological constant…
The ability to test the nature of dark mass-energy components in the universe through large-scale structure studies hinges on accurate predictions of sky survey expectations within a given world model. Numerical simulations predict key…
Dynamic dark energy (DDE) models are often designed to solve the cosmic coincidence (why, just now, is the dark energy density $\rho_{de}$, the same order of magnitude as the matter density $\rho_m$?) by guaranteeing $\rho_{de} \sim \rho_m$…
A mildly inhomogeneous universe with a cosmological constant may look like it contains evolving dark energy. We show that could be the case by modelling the inhomogeneities and their effects in three different ways: as clumped matter…
The evolution of dark energy density is a crucial quantity in understanding the nature of dark energy. Often, the quantity is described by the so-called equation of state, that is the ratio of dark energy pressure to its density. In this…
For a general dark-energy equation of state, we estimate the maximum possible radius of massive structures that are not destabilized by the acceleration of the cosmological expansion. A comparison with known stable structures constrains the…
The discovery of accelerated cosmic expansion implies that, in addition to the attractive gravity of matter, there exists in our universe some other form of energy (dark energy or cosmological constant) producing a repulsive force. The…
Dark energy is an elusive concept, which has been introduced two decades ago in order to make the acceleration of the universe a comprehensible phenomenon. However, the nature of this energy is far from being understood, both from a…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…
Constraints on the expansion history of the universe from measurements of cosmological distances make predictions for large-scale structure growth. Since these predictions depend on assumptions about dark energy evolution and spatial…
The influence of recent detections of a finite vacuum energy ("cosmological constant") on our formulation of anthropic conjectures, particularly the so-called Final Anthropic Principle is investigated. It is shown that non-zero vacuum…
The dark energy that appears to produce the accelerating expansion of the universe can be characterized by an equation of state p=w\rho with w<-1/3. A number of observational tests have been proposed to study the value or redshift…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
It is often assumed that in the course of the evolution of the universe, the dark energy either vanishes or becomes a positive constant. However, recently it was shown that in many models based on supergravity, the dark energy eventually…