Related papers: Is There A Cosmological Constant?
I try to revive, and possibly reconcile, a debate started a few years ago, about the relative roles of a bare cosmological constant and of a vacuum energy, by taking the attitude to try to get the most from the physics now available as…
Independent tests aiming to constrain the value of the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ are usually difficult because of its extreme smallness $\left(\Lambda \simeq 1\times 10^{-52}~\textrm{m}^{-2},~\textrm{or}~2.89\times…
By exploring the relationship between the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a gravitational field and the light propagation in a refractive medium, it is shown that, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, the velocity of…
In this article the cosmological constant problems, as well as the astronomical evidence for a cosmologically significant homogeneous exotic energy density with negative pressure (quintessence), are reviewed for a broad audience of…
A large number of cosmological studies now suggest that roughly two-thirds of the critical energy density of the Universe exists in a component with negative pressure. If the equation of state of such an energy component varies with time,…
A theory of the cosmological constant Lambda is currently out of reach. Still, one can start from a set of axioms that describe the most desirable properties a cosmological constant should have. This can be seen in certain analogy to the…
In this paper, observational constraints on the cosmic equation of state of dark energy ($p = w \rho$) have been investigated using gravitational lensing statistics. A likelihood analysis of the lens surveys has been carried out to…
We conduct the cosmological analysis by using the lens-redshift distribution test with updated galaxy-scale strong lensing sample, where the considered scenarios involve three typical cosmological models (i.e., $\Lambda$CDM, $\omega$CDM and…
In this thesis the cosmological constant is investigated from two points of view. First, we study the influence of a time-dependent cosmological constant on the late-time expansion of the universe. Thereby, we consider several combinations…
Gravitational lensing has long been used to measure or constrain cosmology models. Although the lensing effect of gravitational waves has not been observed by LIGO/Virgo, it is expected that there can be a few to a few hundreds lensed…
We investigate the possibility of measuring the Hubble constant, the fractional energy density components and the equation of state parameter of the ``dark energy'' using lensed multiple images of high-redshift supernovae. With future…
We discuss a new method which is potentially capable of constraining cosmological parameters using observations of giant luminous arcs in rich X-ray clusters of galaxies. The mass profile and the mass normalization of the lenses are…
We use the statistics of strong gravitational lensing from the CLASS survey to impose constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profile of elliptical galaxies. This approach differs from much recent work, where the luminosity…
A large luminosity--linewidth template sample is now available, improved absorption corrections have been derived, and there are a statistically significant number of galaxies with well determined distances to supply the zero point. A…
We compare galaxy number counts in HST/ACS fields containing moderate-redshift (0.2<z<1.0) strong gravitational lenses with those in two control samples: (1) the first square degree of the COSMOS survey, comprising 259 ACS fields and (2) 20…
In this paper we review and build on the common methods used to analyze null geodesics in Schwarzschild de Sitter space. We present a general technique which allows finding measurable intersection angles of null trajectories analytically,…
The gravitational lens equation resulting from a single (non-linear) mass concentration (the main lens) plus inhomogeneities of the large-scale structure is shown to be strictly equivalent to the single-plane gravitational lens equation…
By comparing the dynamical and lensing masses of early-type lens galaxies, one can constrain both the cosmological parameters and the density profiles of galaxies. We explore the constraining power on cosmological parameters and the effect…
We have studied a cosmological model with a cosmological term of the form $\Lambda=3\alpha\fr{\dot R^2}{R^2}+\bt\fr{\ddot R}{R}+\fr{3\gamma}{R^2} \alpha, \ \bt \gamma$ are constants. The scale factor (R) is found to vary linearly with time…
Measured time delays between the images of a gravitationally lensed source can lead to a determination of the Hubble constant ($H_o$), but only if the lensing mass distribution is well understood. The inability to sufficiently constrain…