Related papers: A Low-Density Closed Universe
It is extraordinary that a number of observations indicate that we live in a spatially flat, low matter density Universe, which is currently undergoing a period of accelerating expansion. The effort to explain this current state has focused…
A nearly-massless, slowly-rolling scalar field $\phi$ may provide most of the energy density of the current universe. One potential difficulty with this idea is that couplings to ordinary matter, even if suppressed by the Planck scale,…
We explore the fate of the universe given the possibility that the density associated with `dark energy' may decay slowly with time. Decaying dark energy is modeled by a homogeneous scalar field which couples minimally to gravity and whose…
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…
An initial state for the observable universe consisting of a finite region with a large vacuum energy will break-up due to near horizon quantum critical fluctuations. This will lead to a Friedmann-like early universe consisting of an…
A substantial fraction of the energy density of the universe may consist of quintessence in the form of a slowly-rolling scalar field. Since the energy density of the scalar field generally decreases more slowly than the matter energy…
A model for the Universe is proposed where it is considered as a mixture of scalar and matter fields. The particle production is due to an irreversible transfer of energy from the gravitational field to the matter field and represented by a…
By studying the present cosmological data, particularly on CMB, SNeIA and LSS, we find that the future fate of the universe, for simple linear models of the dark energy equation-of-state, can vary between the extremes of (I) a divergence of…
We study a model in which a closed universe with dust and quintessence matter components may look like an accelerated flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe at low redshifts. Several quantities relevant to the model are expressed in…
The motions of galaxies can be used to constrain the cosmological density parameter Omega and the clustering amplitude of matter on large scales. The mean relative velocity of galaxy pairs, estimated from the Mark III survey, indicates that…
We propose a simple model in which the cosmological dark matter consists of particles whose mass increases with the scale factor of the universe. The particle mass is generated by the expectation value of a scalar field which does not have…
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…
A weakly coupled scalar field $\Phi$ with a simple exponential potential $V=M_P^4\exp(-\lambda\Phi/M_P)$ where $M_P$ is the reduced Planck mass, and $\lambda > 2$, has an attractor solution in a radiation or matter dominated universe in…
After a discussion on several limiting cases where General Relativity turns into less sophisticated theories, we find that in the correct thermodynamical and cosmological weak field limit of Einstein's field equations the entropy of the…
We analyse the constraints that can be placed on a cosmological constant or quintessence-like component by combining observations of Type Ia supernovae with measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. We use the recent…
A scalar-tensor theory of gravity is formulated in which $G$ and particle masses are allowed to vary. The theory yields a globally static cosmological model with no evolutionary timescales, no cosmological coincidences, and no flatness and…
The idea of the quantum state of the Universe described by some density matrix, i.e mixture of at least two vacua, the trivial symmetric and the nontrivial one with spontaneously broken symmetry is discussed. Nonzero cosmological constant…
The metastable dark energy scenario is revisited by assuming that the current false vacuum energy density is the remnant from a primeval inflationary stage. The zero temperature scalar field potential is here described by an even power…
It is shown that in the cosmological models based on a vacuum energy decaying as a^{-2}, where a is the scale factor of the universe, the fate of the universe in regard to whether it will collapse in future or expand forever is determined…
Scalar fields with inverse power-law effective potentials may provide a negative pressure component to the energy density of the universe today, as required by cosmological observations. In order to be cosmologically relevant today, the…