21 research outputs found
Transient cosmic acceleration from interacting fluids
Recent investigations seem to favor a cosmological dynamics according to
which the accelerated expansion of the Universe may have already peaked and is
now slowing down again \cite{sastaro}. As a consequence, the cosmic
acceleration may be a transient phenomenon. We investigate a toy model that
reproduces such a background behavior as the result of a time-dependent
coupling in the dark sector which implies a cancelation of the "bare"
cosmological constant. With the help of a statistical analysis of Supernova
Type Ia (SNIa) data we demonstrate that for a certain parameter combination a
transient accelerating phase emerges as a pure interaction effect.Comment: Latex file, 23 pages, 21 figures in eps format. Discussion enlarged,
new subsection on scalar field dynamics included, accepted for publication in
JCAP
Bulk scalar field in brane-worlds with induced gravity inspired by the term
We obtain the effective field equations in a brane-world scenario within the
framework of a DGP model where the action on the brane is an arbitrary function
of the Ricci scalar, , and the bulk action includes a scalar field
in the matter Lagrangian. We obtain the Friedmann equations and acceleration
conditions in the presence of the bulk scalar field for the term in
four-dimensional gravity.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in JCA
Tomography from the Next Generation of Cosmic Shear Experiments for Viable f(R) Models
We present the cosmic shear signal predicted by two viable cosmological
models in the framework of modified-action f(R) theories. We use f(R) models
where the current accelerated expansion of the Universe is a direct consequence
of the modified gravitational Lagrangian rather than Dark Energy (DE), either
in the form of vacuum energy/cosmological constant or of a dynamical scalar
field (e.g. quintessence). We choose Starobinsky's (St) and Hu & Sawicki's (HS)
f(R) models, which are carefully designed to pass the Solar System gravity
tests. In order to further support - or rule out - f(R) theories as alternative
candidates to the DE hypothesis, we exploit the power of weak gravitational
lensing, specifically of cosmic shear. We calculate the tomographic shear
matrix as it would be measured by the upcoming ESA Cosmic Vision Euclid
satellite. We find that in the St model the cosmic shear signal is almost
completely degenerate with LCDM, but it is easily distinguishable in the HS
model. Moreover, we compute the corresponding Fisher matrix for both the St and
HS models, thus obtaining forecasts for their cosmological parameters. Finally,
we show that the Bayes factor for cosmic shear will definitely favour the HS
model over LCDM if Euclid measures a value larger than ~0.02 for the extra HS
parameter n_HS.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables; tomographic and Bayesian analyses
updated and modified according to reviewer's suggestions; references update
Cosmology of neutrinos and extra light particles after WMAP3
We study how present data probe standard and non-standard properties of
neutrinos and the possible existence of new light particles, freely-streaming
or interacting, among themselves or with neutrinos. Our results include: sum
m_nu < 0.40 eV at 99.9% C.L.; that extra massless particles have abundance
Delta N_nu = 2 pm 1 if freely-streaming and Delta N_nu = 0 pm 1.3 if
interacting; that 3 interacting neutrinos are disfavored at about 4 sigma. We
investigate the robustness of our results by fitting to different sub-sets of
data. We developed our own cosmological computational tools, somewhat different
from the standard ones.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. Added in v2: an explicit comparison of our code
with CAMB, some clarifications on the statistical analysis and some
references. Matches version published in JCA
Observers in an accelerated universe
If the current acceleration of our Universe is due to a cosmological
constant, then a Coleman-De Luccia bubble will nucleate in our Universe. In
this work, we consider that our observations could be likely in this framework,
consisting in two infinite spaces, if a foliation by constant mean curvature
hypersurfaces is taken to count the events in the spacetime. Thus, we obtain
and study a particular foliation, which covers the existence of most observers
in our part of spacetime.Comment: revised version, accepted in EPJ
Inflationary Scenarios from Branes at Angles
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based
brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration
with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry
conditions to produce a very flat potential for the field that parametrises the
distance between the branes, i.e. the inflaton field. This breaking can be
achieved in various ways: by slight relative rotations of the branes with small
angles, by considering small relative velocities between the branes, etc. If
the breaking parameter is sufficiently small, a large number of e-folds can be
produced within the D-brane, for small changes of the configuration in the
compactified directions. Such a process is local, i.e. it does not depend very
strongly on the compactification space nor on the initial conditions. Moreover,
the breaking induces a very small velocity and acceleration, which ensures very
small slow-roll parameters and thus an almost scale invariant spectrum of
metric fluctuations, responsible for the observed temperature anisotropies in
the microwave background. Inflation ends as in hybrid inflation, triggered by
the negative curvature of the string tachyon potential. In this paper we
elaborate on one of the simplest examples: two almost parallel D4-branes in a
flat compactified space.Comment: 29 pages, 9 eps figures, using JHEP3.cls, published in JHE