Cosmic acceleration from effective forces?

We explain an accelerated expansion of the present universe, suggested from observations of supernovae of type Ia at high redshift, by introducing an anti-frictional force that is self-consistently exerted on the particles of the cosmic substratum. Cosmic anti-friction, which is intimately related to ``particle production'', is shown to give rise to an effective negative pressure of the cosmic medium. While other explanations for an accelerated expansion (cosmological constan...

The fact that the LambdaCDM model fits the observations does not necessarily imply the physical existence of `dark energy'. Dropping the assumption that cold dark matter (CDM) is a perfect fluid opens the possibility to fit the data without dark energy. For imperfect CDM, negative bulk pressure is favoured by thermodynamical arguments and might drive the cosmic acceleration. The coincidence between the onset of accelerated expansion and the epoch of structure formation at lar...

The cosmic acceleration is one of the most significant cosmological discoveries over the last century. The two categories of explanation are exotic component (dark energy) and modified gravity. We constrain the two types of model by a joint analysis with perturbation growth and direct $H(z)$ data. Though the minimal $\chi^2$ of the $\Lambda$CDM is almost the same as that of DGP, in the sense of consistency we find that the dark energy ($\Lambda$CDM) model is more favored thro...

We discuss bulk viscous cosmological models. Since the bulk viscous pressure is negative, viable viscous cosmological scenarios with late time accelerated expansion can in principle be constructed. After discussing some alternative models based on bulk viscous effects we will focus on a model very similar to the standard $\Lambda$CDM. We argue that a $\Lambda${\rm v}CDM model, where we assign a very small (albeit perceptible) bulk viscosity to dark matter is in agreement with...

Cosmic acceleration is widely believed to require either a source of negative pressure (i.e., dark energy), or a modification of gravity, which necessarily implies new degrees of freedom beyond those of Einstein gravity. In this paper we present a third possibility, using only dark matter and ordinary matter. The mechanism relies on the coupling between dark matter and ordinary matter through an effective metric. Dark matter couples to an Einstein-frame metric, and experience...

Understanding the space of possible theoretical explanations for the observed cosmic acceleration is a central challenge of modern cosmology. This brief document sketches selected aspects of approaches to this problem, focusing on the possibility that a modification to General Relativity is responsible for acceleration, as presented as a plenary talk at the ICHEP 2012 conference.

As an explanation for the acceleration of the universe, we propose dark matter with self-interactions characterized by a negative pressure; there is no vacuum energy whatsoever in this Cardassian model. These self-interactions may arise due to a long-range "fifth force" which grows with the distance between particles. We use the ordinary Friedmann equation, $H^2 = 8 \pi G \rho/3$, and take the energy density to be the sum of two terms: $\rho = \rho_M + \rho_K$. Here $\rho_M \...

The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the last major building block of the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark energy. At the same time, it posed one of the most profound mysteries in all of science, with deep connections to both astrophysics and particle physics. Cosmic acceleration could arise from the repulsive gravity of dark energy -- for example, ...

We elaborate on the proposal that the observed acceleration of the Universe is the result of the backreaction of cosmological perturbations, rather than the effect of a negative-pressure dark-energy fluid or a modification of general relativity. Through the effective Friedmann equations describing an inhomogeneous Universe after smoothing, we demonstrate that acceleration in our local Hubble patch is possible even if fluid elements do not individually undergo accelerated expa...

Specific internal self-interactions in gaseous cosmic fluids are shown to give rise to effective negative pressures which may violate the strong energy condition. On this basis we discuss the transition from an initial de Sitter phase to a subsequent Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker period as a non-equilibrium configuration of an ultrarelativistic gas. An accelerated expansion of the present universe is obtained as the consequence of a negative internal friction force...