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It is generally argued that the present cosmological observations support the accelerating models of the universe, as driven by the cosmological constant or `dark energy. We argue here that an alternative model of the universe is possible which explains the current observations of the universe. We demonstrate this with a reinterpretation of the magnitude-redshift relation for Type Ia supernovae, since this was the test that gave a spurt to the current trend in favour of the cosmological constant.
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The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the last major building block of the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark energy. At the same time, it posed one of the most profound mysteries in all of science, with deep connections to both astrophysics and particle physics. Cosmic acceleration could arise from the repulsive gravity of dark energy -- for example, the quantum energy of the vacuum -- or it may signal that General Relativity breaks down on cosmological scales and must be replaced. We review the present observational evidence for cosmic acceleration and what it has revealed about dark energy, discuss the various theoretical ideas that have been proposed to explain acceleration, and describe the key observational probes that will shed light on this enigma in the coming years.
In the late 1990s, observations of 93 Type Ia supernovae were analysed in the framework of the FLRW cosmology assuming these to be `standard(isable) candles. It was thus inferred that the Hubble expansion rate is accelerating as if driven by a positive Cosmological Constant $Lambda$. This is still the only direct evidence for the `dark energy that is the dominant component of the standard $Lambda$CDM cosmological model. Other data such as BAO, CMB anisotropies, stellar ages, the rate of structure growth, etc are all `concordant with this model but do not provide independent evidence for accelerated expansion. Analysis of a larger sample of 740 SNe Ia shows that these are not quite standard candles, and highlights the corrections applied to analyse the data in the FLRW framework. The latter holds in the reference frame in which the CMB is isotropic, whereas observations are made in our heliocentric frame in which the CMB has a large dipole anisotropy. This is assumed to be of kinematic origin i.e. due to our non-Hubble motion driven by local inhomogeneity in the matter distribution. The $Lambda$CDM model predicts how this peculiar velocity should fall off as the averaging scale is raised and the universe becomes sensibly homogeneous. However observations of the local `bulk flow are inconsistent with this expectation and convergence to the CMB frame is not seen. Moreover the kinematic interpretation implies a corresponding dipole in the sky distribution of high redshift quasars, which is rejected by observations at 4.9$sigma$. The acceleration of the Hubble expansion rate is also anisotropic at 3.9$sigma$ and aligned with the bulk flow. Thus dark energy may be an artefact of analysing data assuming that we are idealised observers in an FLRW universe, when in fact the real universe is inhomogeneous and anisotropic out to distances large enough to impact on cosmological analyses.
We have shown (Colin et al., 2019) that the acceleration of the Hubble expansion rate inferred from Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is, at $3.9sigma$ significance, a dipole approximately aligned with the CMB dipole, while its monopole component, which can be interpreted as due to a Cosmological Constant or dark energy, is consistent with zero at $1.4sigma$. This has been challenged by Rubin & Heitlauf (2019) who assert that the dipole arises because we made an incorrect assumption about the SNe Ia light-curve parameters (viz. took them to be sample- and redshift independent), and did not allow for the motion of the Solar system (w.r.t. the CMB frame in which the CMB dipole supposedly vanishes). In fact what has an even larger impact on our finding is that we reversed the inconsistent corrections made for the peculiar velocities of the SNe Ia host galaxies w.r.t the CMB frame, which in fact serve to bias the lever arm of the Hubble diagram towards higher inferred values of the monopole. We demonstrate that even if all such corrections are made consistently and both sample- and redshift-dependence is allowed for in the standardisation of supernova light curves, the evidence for isotropic acceleration rises to just $2.8,sigma$. Thus the criticism of Rubin & Heitlauf serves only to highlight that corrections must be made to the SNe Ia data assuming the standard $Lambda$CDM model, in order to recover it from the data.
The origin of negative pressure fluid (the dark energy) is investigated in the quantum model of the homogeneous, isotropic and closed universe filled with a uniform scalar field and a perfect fluid which defines a reference frame. The equations of the model are reduced to the form which allows a direct comparison between them and the equations of the Einsteinian classical theory of gravity. It is shown that quantized scalar field has a form of a condensate which behaves as an antigravitating medium. The theory predicts an accelerating expansion of the universe even if the vacuum energy density vanishes. An antigravitating effect of a condensate has a purely quantum nature. It is shown that the universe with the parameters close to the Planck ones can go through the period of exponential expansion. The conditions under which in semi-classical approximation the universe looks effectively like spatially flat with negative deceleration parameter are determined. The reduction to the standard model of classical cosmology is discussed.
The PAU (Physics of the Accelerating Universe) Survey goal is to obtain photometric redshifts (photo-z) and Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of astronomical objects with a resolution roughly one order of magnitude better than current broad band photometric surveys. To accomplish this, a new large field of view camera (PAUCam) has been designed, built, commissioned and is now operated at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). With the current WHT Prime Focus corrector, the camera covers ~1-degree diameter Field of View (FoV), of which, only the inner ~40 arcmin diameter are unvignetted. The focal plane consists of a mosaic of 18 2k$x4k Hamamatsu fully depleted CCDs, with high quantum efficiency up to 1 micrometers in wavelength. To maximize the detector coverage within the FoV, filters are placed in front of the CCDs inside the camera cryostat (made out of carbon fiber) using a challenging movable tray system. The camera uses a set of 40 narrow band filters ranging from ~4500 to ~8500 Angstroms complemented with six standard broad-band filters, ugrizY. The PAU Survey aims to cover roughly 100 square degrees over fields with existing deep photometry and galaxy shapes to obtain accurate photometric redshifts for galaxies down to i_AB~22.5, detecting also galaxies down to i_AB~24 with less precision in redshift. With this data set we will be able to measure intrinsic alignments, galaxy clustering and perform galaxy evolution studies in a new range of densities and redshifts. Here, we describe the PAU camera, its first commissioning results and performance.
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