No Arabic abstract
We derive a redshift drift formula for the spherically symmetric inhomogeneous pressure Stephani universes which are complementary to the spherically symmetric inhomogeneous density Lema^itre-Tolman-Bondi models. We show that there is a clear difference between redshift drift predictions for these two models as well as between the Stephani models and the standard $Lambda$CDM Friedmann models. The Stephani models have positive drift values at small redshift and behave qualitatively (but not quantitatively) as the $Lambda$CDM models at large redshift, while the drift for LTB models is always negative. This prediction may perhaps be tested in future telescopes such as European Extremely Large Telescope (EELT), Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and especially, in gravitational wave interferometers DECi-Hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and Big Bang Observer (DECIGO/BBO), which aim at low redshift.
A suitable nonlinear interaction between dark matter with an energy density $rho_{M}$ and dark energy with an energy density $rho_{X}$ is known to give rise to a non-canonical scaling $rho_{M} propto rho_{X}a^{-xi}$ where $xi$ is a parameter which generally deviates from $xi =3$. Here we present a covariant generalization of this class of models and investigate the corresponding perturbation dynamics. The resulting matter power spectrum for the special case of a time-varying Lambda model is compared with data from the SDSS DR9 catalogue. We find a best-fit value of $xi = 3.25$ which corresponds to a decay of dark matter into the cosmological term. Our results are compatible with the $Lambda$CDM model at the 2$sigma$ confidence level.
We discuss the possibility to implement a viscous cosmological model, attributing to the dark matter component a behaviour described by bulk viscosity. Since bulk viscosity implies negative pressure, this rises the possibility to unify the dark sector. At the same time, the presence of dissipative effects may alleviate the so called small scale problems in the $Lambda$CDM model. While the unified viscous description for the dark sector does not lead to consistent results, the non-linear behaviour indeed improves the situation with respect to the standard cosmological model.
We derive a luminosity distance formula for the varying speed of light (VSL) theory which involves higher order characteristics of expansion such as jerk, snap and lerk which can test the impact of varying $c$ onto the evolution of the universe. We show that the effect of varying $c$ is possible to be isolated due to the relations connecting observational parameters already by measuring the second-order term in redshift $z$ unless there is a redundancy between the curvature and an exotic fluid of cosmic strings scaling the same way as the curvature.
Nonlocal models of cosmology might derive from graviton loop corrections to the effective field equations from the epoch of primordial inflation. Although the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism would automatically produce causal and conserved effective field equations, the models so far proposed have been purely phenomenological. Two techniques have been employed to generate causal and conserved field equations: either varying an invariant nonlocal effective action and then enforcing causality by the ad hoc replacement of any advanced Greens function with its retarded counterpart, or else introducing causal nonlocality into a general ansatz for the field equations and then enforcing conservation. We point out here that the two techniques access very different classes of models, and that neither one of them may represent what would actually arise from fundamental theory.
An interesting test on the nature of the Universe is to measure the global spatial curvature of the metric in a model independent way, at a level of $|Omega_k|<10^{-4}$, or, if possible, at the cosmic variance level of the amplitude of the CMB fluctuations $|Omega_k|approx10^{-5}$. A limit of $|Omega_k|<10^{-4}$ would yield stringent tests on several models of inflation. Further, improving the constraint by an order of magnitude would help in reducing model confusion in standard parameter estimation. Moreover, if the curvature is measured to be at the value of the amplitude of the CMB fluctuations, it would offer a powerful test on the inflationary paradigm and would indicate that our Universe must be significantly larger than the current horizon. On the contrary, in the context of standard inflation, measuring a value above CMB fluctuations will lead us to conclude that the Universe is not much larger than the current observed horizon, this can also be interpreted as the presence of large fluctuations outside the horizon. However, it has proven difficult, so far, to find observables that can achieve such level of accuracy, and, most of all, be model-independent. Here we propose a method that can in principle achieve that, this is done by making minimal assumptions and using distance probes that are cosmology-independent: gravitational waves, redshift drift and cosmic chronometers. We discuss what kind of observations are needed in principle to achieve the desired accuracy.