8 research outputs found
Cosmological zoo -- accelerating models with dark energy
ecent observations of type Ia supernovae indicate that the Universe is in an
accelerating phase of expansion. The fundamental quest in theoretical cosmology
is to identify the origin of this phenomenon. In principle there are two
possibilities: 1) the presence of matter which violates the strong energy
condition (a substantial form of dark energy), 2) modified Friedmann equations
(Cardassian models -- a non-substantial form of dark matter). We classify all
these models in terms of 2-dimensional dynamical systems of the Newtonian type.
We search for generic properties of the models. It is achieved with the help of
Peixoto's theorem for dynamical system on the Poincar{\'e} sphere. We find that
the notion of structural stability can be useful to distinguish the generic
cases of evolutional paths with acceleration. We find that, while the
CDM models and phantom models are typical accelerating models, the
cosmological models with bouncing phase are non-generic in the space of all
planar dynamical systems. We derive the universal shape of potential function
which gives rise to presently accelerating models. Our results show explicitly
the advantages of using a potential function (instead of the equation of state)
to probe the origin of the present acceleration. We argue that simplicity and
genericity are the best guide in understanding our Universe and its
acceleration.Comment: RevTeX4, 23 pages, 10 figure
Cosmological Measures without Volume Weighting
Many cosmologists (myself included) have advocated volume weighting for the
cosmological measure problem, weighting spatial hypersurfaces by their volume.
However, this often leads to the Boltzmann brain problem, that almost all
observations would be by momentary Boltzmann brains that arise very briefly as
quantum fluctuations in the late universe when it has expanded to a huge size,
so that our observations (too ordered for Boltzmann brains) would be highly
atypical and unlikely. Here it is suggested that volume weighting may be a
mistake. Volume averaging is advocated as an alternative. One consequence may
be a loss of the argument that eternal inflation gives a nonzero probability
that our universe now has infinite volume.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, added references for constant-H hypersurfaces and
also an idea for minimal-flux hypersurface