Implementing Power Law Inflation with Tachyon Rolling on the Brane

We study a minimally coupled tachyon field rolling down to its ground state on the FRW brane. We construct tacyonic potential which can implements power law inflation in the brane world cosmology. The potential turns out to be ${V_0 \phi^{-1}}$ on the brane and reduces to inverse square potential at late times when brane corrections to the Friedmann equation become negligible. We also do similar exercise with a normal scalar field and discover that the inverse square potential on the brane leads to power law inflation.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, New references adde

A primer on problems and prospects of dark energy

This review on dark energy is intended for a wider audience, beginners as well as experts. It contains important notes on various aspects of dark energy and its alternatives. The section on Newtonian cosmology followed by heuristic arguments to capture the pressure effects allows us to discuss the basic features of physics of cosmic acceleration without actually resorting to the framework of general theory of relativity. The brief discussion on observational aspects of dark energy is followed by a detailed exposition of underlying features of scalar field dynamic relevant to cosmology. The review includes pedagogical presentation of generic features of models of dark energy and its possible alternatives.Comment: 23 pages and 10 figures,invited review for Curr. Sci, final versio

Background cosmological dynamics in f(R)f(R) gravity and observational constraints

In this paper, we carry out a study of viable cosmological models in $f(R)$-gravity at the background level. We use observable parameters like $\Omega$ and $\gamma$ to form autonomous system of equations and show that the models under consideration exhibit two different regimes in their time evolution, namely, a phantom phase followed by a quintessence like behavior. We employ statefinder parameters to emphasize a characteristic discriminative signature of these models.Comment: 6 pages, Latex style, 9 eps figures, replaced versions with new references added, Submitted to Phys.Rev.