4 research outputs found
What is there in the black box of dark energy: variable cosmological parameters or multiple (interacting) components?
The coincidence problems and other dynamical features of dark energy are
studied in cosmological models with variable cosmological parameters and in
models with the composite dark energy. It is found that many of the problems
usually considered to be cosmological coincidences can be explained or
significantly alleviated in the aforementioned models.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, talk given at IRGAC2006 (Barcelona, July 11-15,
2006), to appear in J. Phys.
Cosmology with variable parameters and effective equation of state for Dark Energy
A cosmological constant, Lambda, is the most natural candidate to explain the
origin of the dark energy (DE) component in the Universe. However, due to
experimental evidence that the equation of state (EOS) of the DE could be
evolving with time/redshift (including the possibility that it might behave
phantom-like near our time) has led theorists to emphasize that there might be
a dynamical field (or some suitable combination of them) that could explain the
behavior of the DE. While this is of course one possibility, here we show that
there is no imperative need to invoke such dynamical fields and that a variable
cosmological constant (including perhaps a variable Newton's constant too) may
account in a natural way for all these features.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, 1 figure. Talk given at the 7th Intern. Workshop on
Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT 05
Cosmic perturbations with running G and Lambda
Cosmologies with running cosmological term (Lambda) and gravitational
Newton's coupling (G) may naturally be expected if the evolution of the
universe can ultimately be derived from the first principles of Quantum Field
Theory or String Theory. In this paper, we derive the general cosmological
perturbation equations for models with variable G and Lambda in which the
fluctuations in both variables are explicitly included. We demonstrate that, if
matter is covariantly conserved, the late growth of matter density
perturbations is independent of the wavenumber. Furthermore, if Lambda is
negligible at high redshifts and G varies slowly, we find that these
cosmologies produce a matter power spectrum with the same shape as that of the
concordance LCDM model, thus predicting the same basic features on structure
formation. Despite this shape indistinguishability, the free parameters of the
variable G and Lambda models can still be effectively constrained from the
observational bounds on the spectrum amplitude.Comment: Accepted in Classical and Quantum Gravity. One appendix on
perturbations in the Newtonian gauge added. Extended discussion and new
references
Inflationary solutions in asymptotically safe f(R) theories
We discuss the existence of inflationary solutions in a class of renormalization group improved polynomial f(R) theories, which have been studied recently in the context of the asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity. These theories seem to possess a nontrivial ultraviolet fixed point, where the dimensionful couplings scale according to their canonical dimensionality. Assuming that the cutoff is proportional to the Hubble parameter, we obtain modified Friedmann equations which admit both power-law and exponential solutions. We establish that for sufficiently high-order polynomial the solutions are reliable in the sense that considering still higher-order polynomials is very unlikely to change the solution