Viscous Cold Dark Matter in agreement with observations

We discuss bulk viscous cosmological models. Since the bulk viscous pressure is negative, viable viscous cosmological scenarios with late time accelerated expansion can in principle be constructed. After discussing some alternative models based on bulk viscous effects we will focus on a model very similar to the standard $\Lambda$CDM. We argue that a $\Lambda${\rm v}CDM model, where we assign a very small (albeit perceptible) bulk viscosity to dark matter is in agreement with available cosmological observations. Hence, we work with the concept of viscous Cold Dark Matter ({\rm v}CDM). At the level of the perturbations, the growth of {\rm v}CDM structures is slightly suppressed when compared with the standard CDM ones. Having in mind that the small scale problems of the $\Lambda$CDM model are related to an excess of clustering, our proposal seems to indicate a possible direction for solving the serious drawbacks of the CDM paradigm within the standard cosmological model.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, to the proceedings of "49th Winter School of Theoretical Physics Cosmology and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics", L{\ka}dek-Zdr\'oj, Poland, February 10-16, 201

Cosmology with matter diffusion

We construct a viable cosmological model based on velocity diffusion of matter particles. In order to ensure the conservation of the total energy-momentum tensor in the presence of diffusion, we include a cosmological scalar field $\phi$ which we identify with the dark energy component of the Universe. The model is characterized by only one new degree of freedom, the diffusion parameter $\sigma$. The standard $\Lambda$CDM model can be recovered by setting $\sigma=0$. If diffusion takes place ($\sigma >0$) the dynamics of the matter and of the dark energy fields are coupled. We argue that the existence of a diffusion mechanism in the Universe can serve as a theoretical motivation for interacting models. We constrain the background dynamics of the diffusion model with Supernovae, H(z) and BAO data. We also perform a perturbative analysis of this model in order to understand structure formation in the Universe. We calculate the impact of diffusion both on the CMB spectrum, with particular attention to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe signal, and on the matter power spectrum $P(k)$. The latter analysis places strong constraints on the magnitude of the diffusion mechanism but does not rule out the model.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in JCA

Non-linear clustering during the BEC dark matter phase transition

Spherical collapse of the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) dark matter model is studied in the Thomas Fermi approximation. The evolution of the overdensity of the collapsed region and its expansion rate are calculated for two scenarios. We consider the case of a sharp phase transition (which happens when the critical temperature is reached) from the normal dark matter state to the condensate one and the case of a smooth first order phase transition where there is a continuous conversion of "normal" dark matter to the BEC phase. We present numerical results for the physics of the collapse for a wide range of the model's space parameter, i.e. the mass of the scalar particle $m_{\chi}$ and the scattering length $l_s$. We show the dependence of the transition redshift on $m_{\chi}$ and $l_s$. Since small scales collapse earlier and eventually before the BEC phase transition the evolution of collapsing halos in this limit is indeed the same in both the CDM and the BEC models. Differences are expected to appear only on the largest astrophysical scales. However, we argue that the BEC model is almost indistinguishable from the usual dark matter scenario concerning the evolution of nonlinear perturbations above typical clusters scales, i.e., $\gtrsim 10^{14}M_{\odot}$. This provides an analytical confirmation for recent results from cosmological numerical simulations [H.-Y. Schive {\it et al.}, Nature Physics, {\bf10}, 496 (2014)].Comment: 11 pages. Final version to appear in EPJ

Limits on the anomalous speed of gravitational waves from binary pulsars

A large class of modified theories of gravity used as models for dark energy predict a propagation speed for gravitational waves which can differ from the speed of light. This difference of propagations speeds for photons and gravitons has an impact in the emission of gravitational waves by binary systems. Thus, we revisit the usual quadrupolar emission of binary system for an arbitrary propagation speed of gravitational waves and obtain the corresponding period decay formula. We then use timing data from the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar and obtain that the speed of gravitational waves can only differ from the speed of light at the percentage level. This bound places tight constraints on dark energy models featuring an anomalous propagations speed for the gravitational waves.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, Prepared for the IWARA2016 proceeding

Piercing the Vainshtein screen with anomalous gravitational wave speed: Constraints on modified gravity from binary pulsars

By using observations of the Hulse-Taylor pulsar we constrain the gravitational wave (GW) speed to the level of $10^{-2}$. We apply this result to scalar-tensor theories that generalize Galileon 4 and 5 models, which display anomalous propagation speed and coupling to matter for GWs. We argue that this effect survives conventional screening due to the persistence of a scalar field gradient inside virialized overdensities, which effectively "pierces" the Vainshtein screening. In specific branches of solutions, our result allows to directly constrain the cosmological couplings in the effective field theory of dark energy formalism.Comment: v3: typos corrected. Final version to appear on PR