W. S. Hipólito-Ricaldi

The Viscous Dark Fluid Universe

We investigate the cosmological perturbation dynamics for a universe consisting of pressureless baryonic matter and a viscous fluid, the latter representing a unified model of the dark sector. In the homogeneous and isotropic background the total energy density of this mixture behaves as a generalized Chaplygin gas. The perturbations of this energy density are intrinsically nonadiabatic and source relative entropy perturbations. The resulting baryonic matter power spectrum is shown to be compatible with the 2dFGRS and SDSS (DR7) data. A joint statistical analysis, using also Hubble-function and supernovae Ia data, shows that, different from other studies, there exists a maximum in the probability distribution for a negative present value q{sub 0{approx_equal}}-0.53 of the deceleration parameter. Moreover, while previous descriptions on the basis of generalized Chaplygin-gas models were incompatible with the matter power-spectrum data since they required a much too large amount of pressureless matter, the unified model presented here favors a matter content that is of the order of the baryonic matter abundance suggested by big-bang nucleosynthesis.

Non-adiabatic dark fluid cosmology

We model the dark sector of the cosmic substratum by a viscous fluid with an equation of state p = −ζΘ, where Θ is the fluid-expansion scalar and ζ is the coefficient of bulk viscosity for which we assume a dependence ζ∝ρν on the energy density ρ. The homogeneous and isotropic background dynamics coincides with that of a generalized Chaplygin gas with equation of state p = −A/ρα. The perturbation dynamics of the viscous model, however, is intrinsically non-adiabatic and qualitatively different from the Chaplygin-gas case. In particular, it avoids short-scale instabilities and/or oscillations which apparently have ruled out unified models of the Chaplygin-gas type. We calculate the matter power spectrum and demonstrate that the non-adiabatic model is compatible with the data from the 2dFGRS and the SDSS surveys. A χ2-analysis shows, that for certain parameter combinations the viscous-dark-fluid (VDF) model is well competitive with the ΛCDM model. These results indicate that non-adiabatic unified models can be seen as potential contenders for a General-Relativity-based description of the cosmic substratum.

Non-adiabatic perturbations in decaying vacuum cosmology

We investigate a spatially flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmology in which a decaying vacuum term causes matter production at late times. Assuming a decay proportional to the Hubble rate, the ratio of the background energy densities of dark matter and dark energy changes with the cosmic scale factor as a−3/2. The intrinsically non-adiabatic two-component perturbation dynamics of this model is reduced to a single second-order equation. Perturbations of the vacuum term are shown to be negligible on scales that are relevant for structure formation. On larger scales, dark-energy perturbations give a somewhat higher contribution but remain always smaller than the dark-matter perturbations.

Perturbations for transient acceleration

According to the standard ΛCDM model, the accelerated expansion of the Universe will go on forever. Motivated by recent observational results, we explore the possibility of a finite phase of acceleration which asymptotically approaches another period of decelerated expansion. Extending an earlier study on a corresponding homogeneous and isotropic dynamics, in which interactions between dark matter and dark energy are crucial, the present paper also investigates the dynamics of the matter perturbations both on the Newtonian and General Relativistic (GR) levels and quantifies the potential relevance of perturbations of the dark-energy component. In the background, the model is tested against the Supernova type Ia (SNIa) data of the Constitution set and on the perturbative level against growth rate data, among them those of the WiggleZ survey, and the data of the 2dFGRS project. Our results indicate that a transient phase of accelerated expansion is not excluded by current observations.

Baryonic matter perturbations in decaying vacuum cosmology

We consider the perturbation dynamics for the cosmic baryon fluid and determine the corresponding power spectrum for a Λ(t)CDM model in which a cosmological term decays into dark matter linearly with the Hubble rate. The model is tested by a joint analysis of data from supernovae of type Ia (SNIa) (Constitution and Union 2.1), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO), the position of the first peak of the anisotropy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large-scale-structure (LSS) data (SDSS DR7). While the homogeneous and isotropic background dynamics is only marginally influenced by the baryons, there are modifications on the perturbative level if a separately conserved baryon fluid is included. Considering the present baryon fraction as a free parameter, we reproduce the observed abundance of the order of 5% independently of the dark-matter abundance which is of the order of 32% for this model. Generally, the concordance between background and perturbation dynamics is improved if baryons are explicitly taken into account.

CMB and matter power spectra with non-linear dark-sector interactions

An interaction between dark matter and dark energy, proportional to the product of their energy densities, results in a scaling behavior of the ratio of these densities with respect to the scale factor of the Robertson-Walker metric. This gives rise to a class of cosmological models which deviate from the standard model in an analytically tractable way. In particular, it becomes possible to quantify the role of potential dark-energy perturbations. We investigate the impact of this interaction on the structure formation process. Using the (modified) CAMB code we obtain the CMB spectrum as well as the linear matter power spectrum. It is shown that the strong degeneracy in the parameter space present in the background analysis is considerably reduced by considering \textit{Planck} data. Our analysis is compatible with the

INTERACTING DARK ENERGY AND TRANSIENT ACCELERATED EXPANSION

\Lambda

On general features of warm dark matter with reduced relativistic gas

CDM model at the

Dynamics of cosmological perturbations and reheating in the anamorphic universe

2\sigma

Unified models of the cosmological dark sector

confidence level with a slightly preferred direction of the energy flow from dark matter to dark energy.