Gravitational vacuum energy in our recently accelerating universe

We review current observations of the homogeneous cosmological expansion which, because they measure only kinematic variables, cannot determine the dynamics driving the recent accelerated expansion. The minimal fit to the data, the flat $\Lambda CDM$ model, consisting of cold dark matter and a cosmological constant, interprets $4\Lambda$ geometrically as a classical spacetime curvature constant of nature, avoiding any reference to quantum vacuum energy. (The observed Uehling and Casimir effects measure forces due to QED vacuum polarization, but not any quantum material vacuum energies.) An Extended Anthropic Principle, that Dark Energy and Dark Gravity be indistinguishable, selects out flat $\Lambda CDM$. Prospective cosmic shear and galaxy clustering observations of the growth of fluctuations are intended to test whether the 'dark energy' driving the recent cosmological acceleration is static or moderately dynamic. Even if dynamic, observational differences between an additional negative-pressure material component within general relativity (Dark Energy) and low-curvature modifications of general relativity (Dark Gravity) will be extremely small.Comment: 3 pages, from Proceedings of the Casimir Workshop, to be published by IOP in Journal of Physics Conference Serie

Comment on "The Cosmic Time in Terms of the Redshift", by Carmeli et al

The time-redshift relation of Carmeli et al. differs from that of the standard flat LambdaCDM model by more than 500 million years for 1 < z < 4.5.Comment: 2 pages, to appear Found. Phys. Let

Neutrino mass constraint from CMB and its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters

We show that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data of WMAP can give subelectronvolt limit on the neutrino mass: m_nu < 0.63 eV (95% CL). We also investigate its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters. In particular, we show the Hubble constant derived from the WMAP data decreases considerably when the neutrino mass is a few times 0.1 eV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the TAUP2007 Proceeding

A strong first order phase transition in the UMSSM

In this work, the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) strength has been investigated within the $U(1)$ extended Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (UMSSM) without introducing any exotic fields. We found that the EWPT could be strongly first order for reasonable values of the lightest Higgs and neutralino masses.Comment: talk presented in PASCOS2010, Valencia, Spain from 19-23 Jul. 201

Searching for Oscillations in the Primordial Power Spectrum: Perturbative Approach (Paper I)

In this first of two papers, we present a new method for searching for oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum. A wide variety of models predict these features in one of two different flavors: logarithmically spaced oscillations and linearly spaced oscillations. The proposed method treats the oscillations as perturbations on top of the scale-invariant power spectrum, allowing us to vary all cosmological parameters. This perturbative approach reduces the computational requirements for the search as the transfer functions and their derivatives can be precomputed. We show that the most significant degeneracy in the analysis is between the distance to last scattering and the overall amplitude at low frequencies. For models with logarithmic oscillations, this degeneracy leads to an uncertainty in the phase. For linear spaced oscillations, it affects the frequency of the oscillations. In this first of two papers, we test our code on simulated Planck-like data, and show we are able to recover fiducial input oscillations with an amplitude of a few times order 10^{-2}. We apply the code to WMAP9-year data and confirm the existence of two intriguing resonant frequencies for log spaced oscillations. For linear spaced oscillations we find a single resonance peak. We use numerical simulations to assess the significance of these features and conclude that the data do not provide compelling evidence for the existence of oscillatory features in the primordial spectrum.Comment: 13 pages, 22 figures. Paper 1 of 2. Fixed typos, added reference