Accelerating Universe, Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy

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...

Dark matter, the major component of the matter content of the Universe, played a significant role at early stages during structure formation. But at present the Universe is dark energy dominated as well as accelerating. Here, the presence of dark energy has been established by including a time-dependent $\Lambda$ term in the Einstein's field equations. This model is compatible with the idea of an accelerating Universe so far as the value of the deceleration parameter is conce...

The accelerated expansion of the universe implies the existence of an energy contribution known as dark energy. Associated with the cosmological constant in the standard model of cosmology, the nature of this dark energy is still unknown. We will discuss an alternative gravity model in which this dark energy contribution emerges naturally, as a result of allowing for a time-dependence on the gravitational constant, $G$, in Einstein's field equations. With this modification, B...

Based on some observations, the apparent energy, associated with gravity, of vacuums is defined, with that of normal vacuums to be zero and that of the vacuums losing some energy to be negative. An important application of the energy is its contribution to Einstein's equation. A cosmological model, accounting for recent observations of the accelerated expansion of the universe, in the absence of the cosmological constant, can be well constructed. In a certain case, the expans...

A five-dimensional cosmological theory of gravitation that unifies space, time and velocity is presented

This text aims at discussing the relations between the cosmic acceleration and the theory of gravitation and more generally with the hypotheses underlying the construction of our cosmological model, such as the validity of general relativity on astrophysical scales and the Copernican principle. We hope to illustrate that cosmological data have now the potential of testing these hypotheses, which go beyond the measurements of its parameters.

This paper has been withdrawn by the author, due an error in Eq.(4.4), wherein a term of cosmological constant added into a theory of gravitation by Ref.[8], in which such the term is truly forbidden.

It is shown that a non-minimal coupling between the scalar curvature and the matter Lagrangian density may account for the accelerated expansion of the Universe and provide, through mimicking, for a viable unification of dark energy and dark matter. An analytical exploration is first performed, and a numerical study is then used to validate the obtained results. The encountered scenario allows for a better grasp of the proposed mechanism, and sets up the discussion for improv...

The paper is devoted to an explanation of the accelerated rate of expansion of the Universe. Usually the acceleration of the Universe, which is described by FRW metric, is due to dark energy. It is shown that this effect may be considered as a manifestation of torsion tensor for a flat Universe in the realm of Teleparallel gravity. An observer with radial field velocity obey Hubble's Law. As a consequence it is established that this is radial acceleration in a flat Universe. ...

A central theme in cosmology is the perplexing fact that the Universe is undergoing an accelerating expansion. The latter, one of the most important and challenging current problems in cosmology, represents a new imbalance in the governing gravitational field equations. Several candidates, responsible for this expansion, have been proposed in the literature, in particular, dark energy models and modified gravity, amongst others. In this paper, we explore the possibility that ...