Dark energy, matter creation and curvature

The most studied way to explain the current accelerated expansion of the universe is to assume the existence of dark energy; a new component that fill the universe, does not clumps, currently dominates the evolution, and has a negative pressure. In this work I study an alternative model proposed by Lima et al. \cite{lima96}, which does not need an exotic equation of state, but assumes instead the existence of gravitational particle creation. Because this model fits the supernova observations as well as the $\Lambda$CDM model, I perform in this work a thorough study of this model considering an explicit spatial curvature. I found that in this scenario we can alleviate the cosmic coincidence problem, basically showing that these two components, dark matter and dark energy, are of the same nature, but they act at different scales. I also shown the inadequacy of some particle creation models, and also I study a previously propose new model that overcome these difficulties.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in EPJC. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0812.386

Asymmetry in the reconstructed deceleration parameter

We study the orientation dependence of the reconstructed deceleration parameter as a function of redshift. We use the Union 2 and Loss datasets, by using the well known preferred axis discussed in the literature, finding the best fit reconstructed deceleration parameter. We found that a low redshift transition of the reconstructed $q(z)$ is clearly absent in one direction and amazingly sharp in the opposite one. We discuss the possibility that such a behavior can be associated with large scale structures affecting the data.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

Testing a dissipative kinetic k-essence model

In this work, we present a study of a purely kinetic k-essence model, characterized basically by a parameter $\alpha$ in presence of a bulk dissipative term, whose relationship between viscous pressure $\Pi$ and energy density $\rho$ of the background follows a polytropic type law $\Pi \propto \rho^{\lambda+1/2}$, where $\lambda$, in principle, is a parameter without restrictions. Analytical solutions for the energy density of the k-essence field are found in two specific cases: $\lambda=1/2$ and $\lambda=(1-\alpha)/2\alpha$, and then we show that these solutions posses the same functional form than the non-viscous counterpart. Finally, both approach are contrasted with observational data from type Ia supernova, and the most recent Hubble parameter measurements, and therefore, the best values for the parameters of the theory are founds.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted in EPJ

Testing cosmic acceleration for w(z)w(z) parameterizations using fgasf_{gas} measurements in galaxy clusters

In this paper we study the cosmic acceleration for five dynamical dark energy models whose equation of state varies with redshift. The cosmological parameters of these models are constrained by performing a MCMC analysis using mainly gas mass fraction, $f_{gas}$, measurements in two samples of galaxy clusters: one reported by Allen et al. (2004), which consists of $42$ points spanning the redshift range $0.05<z<1.1$, and the other by Hasselfield et al. (2013) from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope survey, which consists of $91$ data points in the redshift range $0.118 < \mathrm{z} < 1.36$. In addition, we perform a joint analysis with the measurements of the Hubble parameter $H(z)$, baryon acoustic oscillations and the cosmic microwave background radiation from WMAP and Planck measurements to estimate the equation of state parameters. We obtained that both $f_{gas}$ samples provide consistent constraints on the cosmological parameters. We found that the $f_{gas}$ data is consistent at the $2\sigma$ confidence level with a cosmic slowing down of the acceleration at late times for most of the parameterizations. The constraints of the joint analysis using WMAP and Planck measurements show that this trend disappears. We have confirmed that the $f_{gas}$ probe provides competitive constraints on the dark energy parameters when a $w(z)$ is assumed.Comment: 21 pages, 8 Tables, 11 Figures, accepted for publication in MNRA