Accelerating Universe, Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy

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. Explanations of cosmic acceleration within the framework of general relativity are plagued by difficulties. General relativistic models are nearly all based on a dark energy field with fine-tuned, unnatural properties. There is a great variet...

In this contribution to the conference "Beyond Einstein: Historical Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century", we give a critical status report of attempts to explain the late accelerated expansion of the universe by modifications of general relativity. Our brief review of such alternatives to the standard cosmological model addresses mainly readers who have not pursued the vast recent literature on this subject.

In this work we show that the presence of a vector field on cosmological scales could explain the present phase of accelerated expansion of the universe. The proposed theory contains no dimensional parameters nor potential terms and does not require unnatural initial conditions in the early universe, thus avoiding the so called cosmic coincidence problem. In addition, it fits the data from high-redshift supernovae with excellent precision, making definite predictions for cosm...

Recent cosmological observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and has negative pressure. Several conceptual issues related to the modeling of this component (`dark energy'), which is driving an accelerated expansion of the universe, are discussed with special emphasis on the cosmological constant as the possible choice for the dark energy. Some curious geometrical features of a universe with a cosmological constant ...

In this article, we introduce a new metric assuming an additional velocity-based term in a spacetime metric. Although the inclusion of this additional phrase can indicate that the Lorentz symmetry has broken, the results of null geodesics demonstrate that the amount of variation in the speed of light is considerably smaller than what can be observed. This article delves into the primary use of this additional phrase in the expansion development of Minkowski and de Sitter spac...

The problem of explaining the acceleration of the expansion of the universe and the observational and theoretical difficulties associated with dark matter and dark energy are discussed. The possibility that Einstein gravity does not correctly describe the large-scale structure of the universe is considered and an alternative gravity theory is proposed as a possible resolution to the problems.

Much effort has been made in trying to solve or at least evade the inconsistencies that emerge from general relativity as the framework for a cosmological model. The extradi- mensional models rise as superb possibilities on this regard. In this work I present cosmo- logical solutions for Wesson's Space-Time-Matter theory of gravity. A relation between mass variation at cosmological scales and the expansion velocity of the universe is ob- tained. Such a relation yields novel f...

We present a cosmological model arising from a gravitational theory with an infinite tower of higher-order curvature invariants that can reproduce the entire evolution of the Universe: from inflation to late-time acceleration, without invoking an inflaton nor a cosmological constant. The theory is Einsteinian-like. The field equations for a Friedmann-Lema\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker metric are of second-order and can reproduce a late-time evolution that is consistent with the ac...

There is now strong observational evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The standard explanation invokes an unknown "dark energy" component. But such scenarios are faced with serious theoretical problems, which has led to increased interest in models where instead General Relativity is modified in a way that leads to the observed accelerated expansion. The question then arises whether the two scenarios can be distinguished. Here we show that this may no...

The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark energy. Yet the underlying cause of cosmic acceleration remains a mystery: it could arise from the repulsive gravity of dark energy -- for example, the quantum energy of the vacuum -- or it may signal that General Relativity breaks down on cosmological scales and must be repla...