Constraining non-standard cosmological models

Current observational evidence does not yet exclude the possibility that dark energy could be in the form of phantom energy. A universe consisting of a phantom constituent will be driven toward a drastic end known as the `Big Rip' singularity where all the matter in the universe will be destroyed. Motivated by this possibility, other evolutionary scenarios have been explored by e.g. Barrow, including the phenomena which he called Sudden Future Singularities (SFS). In a model consisting of such events it is possible to have a blow up of the pressure occurring at sometime in the future evolution of the universe while the energy density would remain unaffected. The particular evolution of the scale factor of the universe in this model that results in a singular behaviour of the pressure also admits acceleration in the current era. In this thesis we will present the results of our confrontation of one example class of SFS models with the available cosmological data from high redshift supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We then discuss the viability of the model under consideration in light of the data.\\ More importantly however in this pursuit, we will make the case that the cosmological constraints employed in this analysis were not blindly applied to the non-standard model in question, which is not unfortunately the practice that is always followed in the cosmology community. This applicability issue is a very important one which if neglected could potentially result in biased and unreliable outcomes. Hence, although we have worked on one example non-standard cosmological model in this thesis, this work could be viewed as a demonstration of a thought through process of testing one's model against observations which can be applied to every other preferred model

Dynamical systems in dark energy models

This PhD thesis is devoted to the study of dynamical systems appearing in theoretical models of dark energy. The quest for understanding the origin of the observed cosmic acceleration has led physicists to advance a large number of phenomenological explanations based on different fundamental theories. The best approach to analyse the background cosmological impli- cations of all these models consists in employing dynamical systems tech- niques. In this thesis, after reviewing elements of dynamical systems theory and basic cosmology, several dynamical systems, which arise in dark energy models ranging from scalar fields to modified gravity, will be studied using both analytical and numerical methods. The work is organised in order to present as many details as possible for the simpler and well known models, while outlining major results and referring to the literature for the less stud- ied ones. This choice aims at providing the reader with a complete overview and summary of dynamical systems in dark energy applications

Late-time acceleration : interacting dark energy and modified gravity

In 1998 astronomical observations of distant stars exploding at the ends of their lives led to the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. This is likely to be caused by an intrinsic part of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity known as the cosmological constant, but naturalness issues and the need to improve observational tests have motivated the study of alternative models of the Universe. The research in this thesis is part of ongoing efforts to pin down the cause of late-time acceleration by better understanding these alternatives and their signatures in cosmological observations. One such alternative is known as interacting dark energy and would be caused by additional matter in the Universe, as yet unknown to particle physics. This would interact with another unknown particle called dark matter that has been part of the standard model of cosmology since the 1970’s. The first part of this thesis contains a review of works on interacting dark energy and investigates a particular version of the model which had not been studied in detail before, placing recent observational constraints on its parameters. Another alternative to the cosmological constant is known as modified gravity, where General Relativity is extended by the addition of new degrees of freedom. Theories of modified gravity are mathematically related to some models of interacting dark energy and can appear very similar in cosmological observations. The second part of this thesis investigates the extent to which the two can be distinguished using current observational data.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Cosmic models and holography

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física Teóric

Modified Theories of Gravity and Cosmological Applications

This reprint focuses on recent aspects of gravitational theory and cosmology. It contains subjects of particular interest for modified gravity theories and applications to cosmology, special attention is given to Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet, f(R)-gravity, anisotropic inflation, extra dimension theories of gravity, black holes, dark energy, Palatini gravity, anisotropic spacetime, Einstein–Finsler gravity, off-diagonal cosmological solutions, Hawking-temperature and scalar-tensor-vector theories

Probing the foundations of the standerd cosmological model

Tesis doctoral inédita, leñida en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física Teórica. Fecha de lectura: 16-11-201