Related papers: Dark Matter and Dark Energy: A Physicist's Perspec…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
The past few years have seen several breakthroughs in particle astrophysics and cosmology. In several cases, new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. In this talk I summarize some of these…
Recent astrophysical observations, pertaining to either high-redshift supernovae or cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations, as those measured recently by the WMAP satellite, provide us with data of unprecedented accuracy,…
Recent cosmological and astrophysical observations point out that the Universe is in accelerating expansion and filled up with non-luminous matter. In order to explain the observed large scale structures and this accelerating behavior one…
Observations provide increasingly strong evidence that the universe is accelerating. This revolutionary advance in cosmological observations confronts theoretical cosmology with a tremendous challenge, which it has so far failed to meet.…
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…
Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed…
We review theoretically well-motivated dark-matter candidates, and pathways to their discovery, in the light of recent results from collider physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Taken in aggregate, these encourage broader thinking in…
This is a short review, aimed at a general audience, of several current subjects of research in cosmology. The topics discussed include the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with particular emphasis on its relevance for testing inflation;…
As cosmology has entered a phase of precision experiments, the content of the universe has been established to contain interesting and not yet fully understood components, namely dark energy and dark matter. While the cause and exact nature…
It is commonly believed that our Universe has experienced two different stages of accelerated expansion. The early stage is known as inflation and the current acceleration is driven by dark energy. Observing inflation and dark energy…
One of the great endeavors of the past decade has been the evaluation of different observational techniques for measuring dark energy properties and of theoretical techniques for constraining models of cosmic acceleration given cosmological…
Cosmic surveys provide crucial information about high energy physics including strong evidence for dark energy, dark matter, and inflation. Ongoing and upcoming surveys will start to identify the underlying physics of these new phenomena,…
Cosmology is entering a very exciting time in its history, when a wealth of cutting-edge experiments are all starting to collect data, or about to. These experiments aim at addressing some of the most intriguing questions in fundamental…
Modern astrophysical and cosmological models are faced with two severe theoretical difficulties, that can be summarized as the dark energy and the dark matter problems. Relative to the former, it has been stated that cosmology has entered a…
The increasing quality of cosmological data has revealed some tensions that could be signalling the necessity of incorporating new physics into our cosmological model. One particularly intriguing possibility is the existence of elastic…
The acceleration of the cosmic expansion is a fundamental challenge to standard models of particle physics and cosmology. The new physics of dark energy may lie in the nature of gravity, the quantum vacuum, or extra dimensions. I give a…
Astronomical observations from small galaxies to the largest scales in the universe can be consistently explained by the simple idea of dark matter. The nature of dark matter is however still unknown. Empirically it cannot be any of the…
The discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s was a watershed moment in modern cosmology, as it indicated the presence of a fundamentally new, dominant contribution to the energy budget of the universe. Evidence for dark…
Cosmologists are just beginning to probe the properties of the cosmic vacuum and its role in reversing the attractive pull of gravity to cause an acceleration in the expansion of the cosmos. The cause of this acceleration is given the…