388 research outputs found
An interacting model for the cosmological dark sector
We discuss a new interacting model for the cosmological dark sector in which
the attenuated dilution of cold dark matter scales as , where f(a)
is an arbitrary function of the cosmic scale factor . From thermodynamic
arguments, we show that f(a) is proportional to entropy source of the particle
creation process. In order to investigate the cosmological consequences of this
kind of interacting models, we expand f(a) in a power series and viable
cosmological solutions are obtained. Finally, we use current observational data
to place constraints on the interacting function f(a).Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. D (in press
Energy Conditions and Supernovae Observations
In general relativity, the energy conditions are invoked to restrict general
energy-momentum tensors on physical grounds. We show that in the standard
Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker approach to cosmological modelling where
the equation of state of the cosmological fluid is unknown, the energy
conditions provide model-independent bounds on the behavior of the distance
modulus of cosmic sources as a function of the redshift. We use both the gold
and the legacy samples of current type Ia supenovae to carry out a
model-independent analysis of the energy conditions violation in the context of
standard cosmology.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; v2: References added, misprints corrected,
published in Phys.Rev.D in the present for
A note on cosmological parameters and the topology of the universe
Given the wealth of increasingly accurate cosmological observations,
especially the recent results from the WMAP, and the development of methods and
strategies in the search for cosmic topology, it is reasonable to expect that
we should be able to detect the spatial topology of the Universe in the near
future. Motivated by this, we examine to what extent a possible detection of a
nontrivial topology of positively curved universe may be used to place
constraints on the matter content of the Universe. We show through concrete
examples that the knowledge of the spatial topology allows to place constraints
on the density parameters associated to dark matter () and dark
energy ()Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revtex4. Prepared for 100 Years of Relativity:
International Conference on Classical and Quantum Aspects of Gravity and
Cosmology, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 22-24 Aug 200
Forecasting cosmological constraints from age of high-z galaxies
We perform Monte Carlo simulations based on current age estimates of high-z
objects to forecast constraints on the equation of state (EoS) of the dark
energy. In our analysis, we use two different EoS parameterizations, namely,
the so-called CPL and its uncorrelated form and calculate the improvements on
the figure of merit for both cases. Although there is a clear dependence of the
FoM with the size and accuracy of the synthetic age samples, we find that the
most substantial gain in FoM comes from a joint analysis involving age and
baryon acoustic oscillation data.Comment: 4 pages, 13 figures, late
Coupled quintessence and vacuum decay
We discuss observational consequences of a class of cosmological models
characterized by the dilution of pressureless matter attenuated with respect to
the usual scaling due to the decay of vacuum energy. We carry out a
joint statistical analysis of observational data from the new \emph{gold}
sample of 182 SNe Ia, recent estimates of the CMB shift parameter, and BAO
measurements from the SDSS to show that such models favor the decay of vacuum
only into the dark matter sector, and that the separately conserved baryons
cannot be neglected. In order to explore ways to more fundamentally motivated
models, we also derive a coupled scalar field version for this general class of
vacuum decay scenarios.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, LaTe
Lookback time bounds from energy conditions
In general relativity, the energy conditions are invoked to restrict general
energy-momentum tensors on physical grounds. We show that in the standard
Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) approach to cosmological modeling,
where the energy and matter components of the cosmic fluid are unknown, the
energy conditions provide model-independent bounds on the behavior of the
lookback time of cosmic sources as a function of the redshift for any value of
the spatial curvature. We also confront such bounds with a lookback time sample
which is built from the age estimates of 32 galaxies lying in the interval
and by assuming the total expanding age of the
Universe to be Gyr, as obtained from current cosmic microwave
background experiments. In agreement with previous results, we show that all
energy conditions seem to have been violated at some point of the recent past
of cosmic evolution.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. v2: Minor changes, published in Phys.Rev.D in the
present for
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