Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper

A special issue of Universe (ISSN 2218-1997).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2018) | Viewed by 21209

Special Issue Editors

Departments of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, University of Szeged, Dóm tér 9, 6720 Szeged, Hungary
Interests: general relativity; cosmology; gravitational waves; black holes; modified gravitational theories; quantisation; quantum field theory in curved spacetime
Ministero dell'Istruzione e del Merito, Viale Unità di Italia 68, 70125 Bari, BA, Italy
Interests: general relativity and gravitation; classical general relativity; post-newtonian approximation, perturbation theory, related approximations; gravitational waves; observational cosmology; mathematical and relativistic aspects of cosmology; modified theories of gravity; higher-dimensional gravity and other theories of gravity; experimental studies of gravity; experimental tests of gravitational theories; geodesy and gravity; harmonics of the gravity potential field; geopotential theory and determination; satellite orbits; orbit determination and improvement; astrometry and reference systems; ephemerides, almanacs, and calendars; lunar, planetary, and deep-space probes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe University, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany
Interests: alternative theories of gravity; relativisti astrophysics; test of gravity
1. National Observatory of Athens, Lofos Nymfon, 11852 Athens, Greece
2. CAS Key Laboratory for Researches in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
3. Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Católica del Norte, Avda. Angamos 0610, Casilla, Antofagasta 1280, Chile
Interests: ark energy formulation; modified theories of gravity; inflationary cosmology; brane cosmology; observational cosmology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The first modern cosmological models emerged soon after the discovery of general relativity, putting the study of the Universe as a whole on the firm grounds of an empirically testable, coherent science. In the century since then, cosmology has developed into a precision discipline able to explain the evolution of the Universe in several of its aspects. The goal is under the way, but far than ended. The most stringent open questions remain the nature of dark matter (DM) and of dark energy (DE), and whether General Relativity holds on large cosmological scales.

Of course, many independent observation (anisotropies in CMB, large structure, SNIa data, gravitational lensing, galaxy rotational curves etc.) confirm the necessity of the introduction of these dark components.

However, the existence itself of the most likely DM candidates seem to have been seriously challenged by experiments and or astrophysical observations: e.g. supersymmetric DM and WIMPs by LHC; by LUX, PandaX-II and Xenon100; MACHOs by microlensing. Sterile neutrinos by IceCube and high redshift objects. The properties of the DM in galaxies are presently badly explainable by current theoretical scenarios. At present the nature of DM remains a mystery.

Understanding DE poses an even bigger challenge. Although the cosmological constant may explain the accelerated cosmic expansion, its physical interpretation (as vacuum energy) remains doubtful. Question comes what kind of fields can be responsible for the accelerated cosmic expansion. Several scalar field models of DE induce new type of space-time singularities (e.g. soft singularities). Alternative gravitational theories (e.g. scalar-tensor theories, the emergent gravity model of Verlinde) have been also proposed with the purpose to explain the dark sector.

We invite colleagues to submit papers on the topics:

1: The nature of Dark matter and DE

2: Present/future experiments and observations related to DM, DE and their gravitational effects.

3: Models on DM and DE including the alternative gravitational theories, new fields and their possible interaction with the particles of standard model.

4: Evolution of the Universe, cosmological perturbations, formation of nonlinear structures, first objects.

5: Inflation, initial structure, primordial gravitational waves.

6: Primordial black/white holes, their formation and gravitational waves, their effects on the synthesis of light elements.

7: Anisotropic cosmological models and their perturbations.

8: Exotic singularities, wormholes occurring in cosmological models and in virialized structure.

Dr. Zoltán Keresztes
Prof. Lorenzo Iorio
Prof. Dr. Mariafelicia De Laurentis
Prof. Emmanuel Saridakis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Universe is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • dark matter
  • dark energy
  • cosmological perturbation
  • large scale structure
  • inflation
  • baryon-anti baryon asymmetry
  • primordial nucleosynthesis
  • rotation curves
  • Supermassive Black Holes
  • recombination
  • primordial black/white holes
  • alternative gravitational theories
  • exotic singularities
  • wormholes
  • anistropic expansion of the Universe

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 248 KiB  
Article
Probing the Vacuum Decay Hypothesis with Growth Function Data
by Edésio M. Barboza, Jr.
Universe 2018, 4(2), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe4020039 - 16 Feb 2018
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2282
Abstract
In this paper, we present a method to probe the vacuum decay hypothesis by searching for deviations of the uncoupled dark matter density evolution formula. The method consists of expanding the dark matter density in a Taylor series and then comparing the series [...] Read more.
In this paper, we present a method to probe the vacuum decay hypothesis by searching for deviations of the uncoupled dark matter density evolution formula. The method consists of expanding the dark matter density in a Taylor series and then comparing the series coefficients obtained from the observational analysis with its uncoupled values. We use the growth rate data to put constraints on the series coefficients. The results obtained are consistent with the Λ CDM model, but it is shown that the possibility of vacuum decay cannot be ruled out by current growth rate data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
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20 pages, 815 KiB  
Article
Conformally Coupled General Relativity
by Andrej Arbuzov and Boris Latosh
Universe 2018, 4(2), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe4020038 - 14 Feb 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2241
Abstract
The gravity model developed in the series of papers (Arbuzov et al. 2009; 2010), (Pervushin et al. 2012) is revisited. The model is based on the Ogievetsky theorem, which specifies the structure of the general coordinate transformation group. The theorem is implemented in [...] Read more.
The gravity model developed in the series of papers (Arbuzov et al. 2009; 2010), (Pervushin et al. 2012) is revisited. The model is based on the Ogievetsky theorem, which specifies the structure of the general coordinate transformation group. The theorem is implemented in the context of the Noether theorem with the use of the nonlinear representation technique. The canonical quantization is performed with the use of reparametrization-invariant time and Arnowitt– Deser–Misner foliation techniques. Basic quantum features of the models are discussed. Mistakes appearing in the previous papers are corrected. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
22 pages, 682 KiB  
Article
Constraints on Dark Energy Models from Galaxy Clusters and Gravitational Lensing Data
by Alexander Bonilla and Jairo E. Castillo
Universe 2018, 4(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe4010021 - 22 Jan 2018
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3667
Abstract
The Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect is a global distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum as a result of its interaction with a hot electron plasma in the intracluster medium of large structures gravitationally viralized such as galaxy clusters (GC). Furthermore, this hot [...] Read more.
The Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect is a global distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum as a result of its interaction with a hot electron plasma in the intracluster medium of large structures gravitationally viralized such as galaxy clusters (GC). Furthermore, this hot gas of electrons emits X-rays due to its fall in the gravitational potential well of the GC. The analysis of SZ and X-ray data provides a method for calculating distances to GC at high redshifts. On the other hand, many galaxies and GC produce a Strong Gravitational Lens (SGL) effect, which has become a useful astrophysical tool for cosmology. We use these cosmological tests in addition to more traditional ones to constrain some alternative dark energy (DE) models, including the study of the history of cosmological expansion through the cosmographic parameters. Using Akaike and Bayesian Information Criterion, we find that the w C D M and Λ C D M models are the most favoured by the observational data. In addition, we found at low redshift a peculiar behavior of slowdown of the universe, which occurs in dynamical DE models when we use data from GC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
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424 KiB  
Article
Dark Energy and Inflation from Gravitational Waves
by Leonid Marochnik
Universe 2017, 3(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe3040072 - 18 Oct 2017
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3967
Abstract
In this seven-part paper, we show that gravitational waves (classical and quantum) produce the accelerated de Sitter expansion at the start and at the end of the cosmological evolution of the Universe. In these periods, the Universe contains no matter fields but contains [...] Read more.
In this seven-part paper, we show that gravitational waves (classical and quantum) produce the accelerated de Sitter expansion at the start and at the end of the cosmological evolution of the Universe. In these periods, the Universe contains no matter fields but contains classical and quantum metric fluctuations, i.e., it is filled with classical and quantum gravitational waves. In such evolution of the Universe, dominated by gravitational waves, the de Sitter state is the exact solution to the self-consistent equations for classical and quantum gravitational waves and background geometry for the empty space-time with FLRW metric. In both classical and quantum cases, this solution is of the instanton origin since it is obtained in the Euclidean space of imaginary time with the subsequent analytic continuation to real time. The cosmological acceleration from gravitational waves provides a transparent physical explanation to the coincidence, threshold and “old cosmological constant” paradoxes of dark energy avoiding recourse to the anthropic principle. The cosmological acceleration from virtual gravitons at the start of the Universe evolution produces inflation, which is consistent with the observational data on CMB anisotropy. Section 1 is devoted to cosmological acceleration from classical gravitational waves. Section 2 is devoted to the theory of virtual gravitons in the Universe. Section 3 is devoted to cosmological acceleration from virtual gravitons. Section 4 discusses the consistency of the theory with observational data on dark energy and inflation. The discussion of mechanism of acceleration and cosmological scenario are contained in Sections 5 and 6. Appendix contains the theory of stochastic nonlinear gravitational waves of arbitrary wavelength and amplitude in an isotropic Universe. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
524 KiB  
Article
Dark Energy, QCD Axion, and Trans-Planckian-Inflaton Decay Constant
by Jihn E. Kim
Universe 2017, 3(4), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe3040068 - 26 Sep 2017
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3567
Abstract
Pseudoscalars appear frequently in particle spectra. They can be light if they appear as pseudo-Goldstone bosons from some spontaneously broken global symmetries with the decay constant f. Since any global symmetry is broken at least by quantum gravitational effects, all pseudoscalars are [...] Read more.
Pseudoscalars appear frequently in particle spectra. They can be light if they appear as pseudo-Goldstone bosons from some spontaneously broken global symmetries with the decay constant f. Since any global symmetry is broken at least by quantum gravitational effects, all pseudoscalars are massive. The mass scale of a pseudoscalar is determined by the spontaneous symmetry breaking scale f of the corresponding global symmetry and the explicit breaking terms in the effective potential. The explicit breaking terms can arise from anomaly terms with some non-Abelian gauge groups among which the best-known example is the potential of the QCD axion. Even if there is no breaking terms from gauge anomalies, there can be explicit breaking terms in the potential in which case the leading term suppressed by f determines the pseudoscalar mass scale. If the breaking term is extremely small and the decay constant is trans-Planckian, the corresponding pseudoscalar can be a candidate for a quintessential axion. In the other extreme that the breaking scales are large, still the pseudo-Goldstone boson mass scales are in general smaller than the decay constants. In such a case, still the potential of the pseudo-Goldstone boson at the grand unification scale is sufficiently flat near the top of the potential that it can be a good candidate for an inflationary model. We review these ideas in the bosonic collective motion framework. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
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Review

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6443 KiB  
Review
Weak Lensing Data and Condensed Neutrino Objects
by Peter Morley and Douglas Buettner
Universe 2017, 3(4), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe3040081 - 23 Nov 2017
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4417
Abstract
Condensed Neutrino Objects (CNO) are a candidate for the Dark Matter which everyone has been looking for. In this article, from Albert Einstein’s original 1911 and 1917 papers, we begin the journey from weak lensing data to neutrino signatures. New research results include [...] Read more.
Condensed Neutrino Objects (CNO) are a candidate for the Dark Matter which everyone has been looking for. In this article, from Albert Einstein’s original 1911 and 1917 papers, we begin the journey from weak lensing data to neutrino signatures. New research results include an Einasto density profile that fits to a range of candidate degenerate neutrino masses, goodness-of-fit test results for our functional CNO mass/radius relationship which fits to available weak lensing data, and new results based on revised constraints for the CNO that our Local Group of galaxies is embedded in. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper)
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