Physics and cosmology in an inhomogeneous Universe

Recently, inhomogeneous generalisations of the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmological models have gained interest in the astrophysical community and are more often employed to study cosmological phenomena. However, in many papers the inhomogeneous cosmological models are treated as an alternative to the FLRW models. In fact, they are not an alternative, but an exact perturbation of the latter, and are gradually becoming a necessity in modern cosmology. The assumptio...

This paper analyses cosmological observations within inhomogeneous and exact solutions of the Einstein equations. In some way the analyses presented here can be freed from assumptions such as small amplitude of the density contrast. The supernova observations are analysed using the Lema\itre-Tolman model and the CMB observations are analysed using the quasispherical Szekeres model. The results show that it is possible to fit the supernova data without the cosmological constan...

Based on the Lema\^itre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) metric we consider two flat inhomogeneous big-bang models. We aim at clarifying, as far as possible analytically, basic features of the dynamics of the simplest inhomogeneous models and to point out the potential usefulness of exact inhomogeneous solutions as generalizations of the homogeneous configurations of the cosmological standard model. We discuss explicitly partial successes but also potential pitfalls of these simplest model...

Recently, there have been suggestions that the apparent accelerated expansion of the universe is not caused by repulsive gravitation due to dark energy, but is rather a result of inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter. In this work, we investigate the behaviour of a dust dominated inhomogeneous Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi universe model, and confront it with various astrophysical observations. We find that such a model can easily explain the observed luminosity distance-reds...

It is shown how certain observations interpreted in the background of the Friedmann model with $\Lambda < 0 = k$ (the $\Lambda$CDM model) can be re-interpreted using the $\Lambda = 0$ Lema\^{\i}tre - Tolman (L-T) model so as to do away with the "dark energy". The purpose of the paper is to clarify the underlying geometrical relations by doing the calculations as much as possible analytically or by very simple numerical programs. In the first part of the paper (fictitious) obs...

An overview of some recent developments in inhomogeneous models is presented. As the volume and precision of cosmological data improves, it will become more and more essential to understand the non-linear behaviour of the Einstein field equations. This requires the study of exact inhomogeneous solutions, including their density distributions, their evolution, their geometry, and their causal structure. Observations are strongly affected by the detailed geometry and evolution ...

Inhomogeneous cosmological models are often reported to suffer from a fine-tuning problem because of the observer's location. We study if this is a generic feature in the Lema\^{i}tre-Tolman (LT) models, by investigating if there are models with freedom in the initial state. In these cases, the present fine-tuned location would be evolved from a non-fine-tuned initial state and thus vanishing the problem. In this paper, we show that this is not a generic problem and we give t...

An alternative to the postulate of dark energy required to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe is to adopt an inhomogeneous cosmological model to explain the supernovae data without dark energy. We adopt a void cosmology model, based on the inhomogeneous Lema\^{i}tre-Tolman-Bondi solution of Einstein's field equations. The model can resolve observational anomalies in the $\Lambda CDM$ model, such as the discrepancy between the locally measured value of the Hubbl...

The current standard model of cosmology, the LambdaCDM model, is based on the homogeneous FLRW solutions of the Einstein equations to which some perturbations are added to account for the CMB features and structure formation at large scales. This model fits rather well the observations provided 95% of the energy density budget of the Universe should be of an unknown physical nature, i.e. dark matter and dark energy. Now, the aim of a cosmological model is not merely to reprod...

I discuss the spherically symmetric but inhomogeneous Lemaitre-Tolman- Bondi (LTB) metric, which provides an exact toy model for an inhomogeneous universe. Since we observe light rays from the past light cone, not the expansion of the universe, spatial variation in matter density and Hubble rate can have the same effect on redshift as acceleration in a perfectly homogeneous universe. As a consequence, a simple spatial variation in the Hubble rate can account for the distant s...