Related papers: The Cosmological Flatness Problem and Limits on Da…
The R_h=ct Universe is a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology which, like LCDM, assumes the presence of dark energy in addition to (baryonic and non-luminous) matter and radiation. Unlike LCDM, however, it is also constrained by the…
The recent observations support that our universe is flat and expanding with acceleration. A quintessence model with a general relation between the quintessence potential and the quintessence kinetic energy was proposed to explain the…
We examine the evolution of a universe comprising two interacting fluids, which interact via a term proportional to the product of their densities. In the case of two matter fluids it is shown that the ratio of the densities tends to a…
Motivated by the cosmological constant and the coincidence problems, we consider a cosmological model where the dark sectors are interacting together through a phenomenological decay law $\dot{\rho}_{\Lambda}=Q\rho_{\Lambda}^n$ in a FRW…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
In a class of models designed to solve the cosmological constant problem by coupling scalar or tensor classical fields to the space-time curvature, the universal scale factor grows as a power law in the age, $a \propto t^\alpha$, regardless…
Recent cosmological observations strongly suggest that the universe is dominated by an unknown form of energy with negative pressure. Why is this dark energy density of order the critical density today? We propose that the dark energy has…
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…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
The discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating in time is a major discovery which still awaits adequate explanation. It is generally agreed that this implies a cosmic repulsion as a result of the existence of a…
Determining the initial state of the universe is a challenging problem in quantum cosmology and we argue that the issue is intractable if the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are not modified in a nontrivial way. Namely a "standard"…
The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades. In this short review, we briefly summarize theories for the origin of cosmic acceleration and the observational methods being used to…
As experimentalists step up their pursuit of cold dark matter particles and neutrino masses, cosmological constraints are tightening. We compute the joint constraints on 11 cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background and large…
Motivated by the cosmological constant and the coincidence problems, we consider a cosmological model where the cosmological constant $\Lambda_0$ is replaced by a cosmological term $\Lambda(t)$ which is allowed to vary in time. More…
By way of a complete integration of the Friedmann equations, in terms of observables, it is shown that for the cosmological constant $\Lambda > 0$ there exist non-flat FLRW models for which the total density parameter $\Omega$ remains $\sim…
Cosmological constant a.k.a. dark energy problem is considered to be one major challenge in modern cosmology. Here we present a model where large scale structure formation causes spatially-flat FRW universe to fragment into numerous `FRW…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
For a flat universe presently dominated by smooth energy, either cosmological constant (LCDM) or quintessence (QCDM), we calculate the asymptotic collapsed mass fraction as function of the present ratio of smooth energy to matter energy…
We focus on uncertainties in supernova measurements, in particular of individual magnitudes and redshifts, to review to what extent supernovae measurements of the expansion history of the universe are likely to allow us to constrain a…
Matter with an equation of state $p=-\rho/3$ may arise in certain scalar field theories, and the energy density of this matter decreases as $a^{-2}$ with the scale factor $a$ of the Universe. In this case, the Universe could be closed but…