Cosmic acceleration from effective forces?

Using observational data on the expansion rate of the universe (H(z)) we constrain the effective Lagrangian of the current accelerated expansion. Our results show that the effective potential is consistent with being flat i.e., a cosmological constant; it is also consistent with the field moving along an almost flat potential like a pseudo-Goldstone boson. We show that the potential of dark energy does not deviate from a constant at more than 6% over the redshift range 0 < z ...

Creation of Cold Dark Matter (CCDM) can macroscopically be described by a negative pressure, and, therefore, the mechanism is capable to accelerate the Universe, without the need of an additional dark energy component. In this framework we discuss the evolution of perturbations by considering a Neo-Newtonian approach where, unlike in the standard Newtonian cosmology, the fluid pressure is taken into account even in the homogeneous and isotropic background equations (Lima, Zan...

The discovery of cosmic acceleration has triggered a consistent body of theoretical work aimed at modeling its phenomenology and understanding its fundamental physical nature. In recent years, a powerful formalism that accomplishes both these goals has been developed, the so-called effective field theory of dark energy. It can capture the behavior of a wide class of modified gravity theories and classify them according to the imprints they leave on the smooth background expan...

It was first observed at the end of the last century that the universe is presently accelerating. Ever since, there have been several attempts to explain this observation theoretically. There are two possible approaches. The more conventional one is to modify the matter part of the Einstein Field Equations and the second one is to modify the geometry part. We shall consider two phenomenological models based on the former, more conventional approach within the context of Gener...

We present a simple (microscopic) model in which bulk viscosity plays a role in explaining the present acceleration of the universe. The effect of bulk viscosity on the Friedmann equations is to turn the pressure into an "effective" pressure containing the bulk viscosity. For a sufficiently large bulk viscosity, the effective pressure becomes negative and could mimic a dark energy equation of state. Our microscopic model includes self-interacting spin-zero particles (for whic...

It is proposed that the current acceleration of the universe is not originated by the existence of a mysterious dark energy fluid nor by the action of extra terms in the gravity Lagrangian, but just from the sub-quantum potential associated with the CMB particles. The resulting cosmic scenario corresponds to a benigner phantom model which is free from the main problems of the current phantom approaches.

We propose a new class of quintessence models in which late times oscillations of a scalar field give rise to an effective equation of state which can be negative and hence drive the observed acceleration of the universe. Our ansatz provides a unified picture of quintessence and a new form of dark matter we call "Frustrated Cold Dark Matter" (FCDM). FCDM inhibits gravitational clustering on small scales and could provide a natural resolution to the core density problem for di...

We show that an interaction between dark matter and dark energy generically results in an effective dark energy equation of state of w<-1. This arises because the interaction alters the redshift-dependence of the matter density. An observer who fits the data treating the dark matter as non-interacting will infer an effective dark energy fluid with w<-1. We argue that the model is consistent with all current observations, the tightest constraint coming from estimates of the ma...

A range of cosmological observations demonstrate an accelerated expansion of the Universe, and the most likely explanation of this phenomenon is a cosmological constant. Given the importance of understanding the underlying physics, it is relevant to investigate alternative models. This article uses numerical simulations to test the consistency of one such alternative model. Specifically, this model has no cosmological constant, instead the dark matter particles have an extra ...

We develop a cosmological model based on action-dependent Lagrangian theories. The main feature here is the nonconservation of the energy momentum tensor due to the nontrivial geometrical construction of the theory. We provide the basic set of equations necessary to study both the cosmological background expansion as well as the linear matter perturbation growth. We show that the simplest realization of the Universe as described by only one component is not viable as expected...