Dark Matter

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-78
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Bertone

I introduce here the problem of dark energy, a substance that appears to be pushing the Universe to expand ever faster and discuss the large effort currently in place to understand its origin. I describe the surprising recent discovery of a widening crack in the cathedral of modern cosmology arising from the measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe. And I argue that gravitational waves observations can help us to either repair that crack, or to bring down that magnificent building, in case it turns out to be fatally flawed. Before all women and all men. Before animals, plants, archaeans, bacteria. Before the Earth was formed and the stars were lit. Before everything we know, the Universe was immersed in an amorphous and oblivious darkness.

Author(s):  
Gianfranco Bertone

The spectacular advances of modern astronomy have opened our horizon on an unexpected cosmos: a dark, mysterious Universe, populated by enigmatic entities we know very little about, like black holes, or nothing at all, like dark matter and dark energy. In this book, I discuss how the rise of a new discipline dubbed multimessenger astronomy is bringing about a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos, by combining the traditional approach based on the observation of light from celestial objects, with a new one based on other ‘messengers’—such as gravitational waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays—that carry information from otherwise inaccessible corners of the Universe. Much has been written about the extraordinary potential of this new discipline, since the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for the direct detection of gravitational waves. But here I will take a different angle and explore how gravitational waves and other messengers might help us break the stalemate that has been plaguing fundamental physics for four decades, and to consolidate the foundations of modern cosmology.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (33) ◽  
pp. 2501-2521
Author(s):  
GREG P. PROPER

The prevailing view in modern cosmology is that the universe is comprised of immense quantities of exotic materials (i.e. Dark Matter and Dark Energy) that have yet to be positively identified. However, there is also a small group of scientists who believe that the answer to this dilemma is to be found in the modification of gravity (i.e. General Relativity). This short paper states that if we make the bold assumption that all objects/observers are comprised of sets of spacetime coordinates that change (albeit slowly) as the universe ages, then three puzzles that currently confront cosmologists, astronomers and astrophysicists can easily be answered using relatively simple calculations. The condition necessary to explore this possibility can be obtained if one postulates that relativistic gravitational potential lessens (in absolute magnitude) everywhere as the universe ages (n). That is, the spacetime metric gμν(x)→gμν(x, n). If gravity behaves in this manner, then it can be shown that it is the causitive agent of indeterminism in nature.


2021 ◽  
pp. 53-65
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Bertone

In the second part of the book, I argue that the four biggest mysteries of modern physics and astronomy—dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and the Big Bang—sink their roots into the physics of the infinitely small. And I argue that gravitational waves may shed new light on, and possibly solve, each of these four mysteries. I start here by introducing the problem of dark matter, the mysterious substance that permeates the Universe at all scales and describe the gravitational waves observations that might soon elucidate its nature. The next time you see the Sun shining in the sky, consider this: what blinds your eyes and warms your skin is an immense nuclear furnace, which transforms millions of tons of nuclear fuel into energy every second. And when you contemplate the night sky, try to visualize it for what it essentially is: an endless expanse of colossal natural reactors, forging the atoms that we, and everything that surrounds us, are made of.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (08n09) ◽  
pp. 1674-1677
Author(s):  
SANDRO SILVA E COSTA

One approach in modern cosmology consists in supposing that dark matter and dark energy are different manifestations of a single 'quartessential' fluid. Following such idea, this work presents a summary of some studies of the evolution of density perturbations in a flat cosmological model with a modified Chaplygin gas acting as a single component. Our goal is to obtain properties of the model which can be used to distinguish it from another cosmological models which have the same solutions for the general evolution of the scale factor of the universe, even without the construction of the power spectrum. Both our analytical and numerical results clearly indicate as one interesting feature of the model the presence of peaks in the evolution of the density constrast.


Author(s):  
R. Bruce Partridge

Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) form the basis for modern ‘precision cosmology’. This chapter treats the discovery of a ≈3 K microwave background and the demonstration of its cosmic origin. Key observational results, up to and including the results from the COBE mission, follow. The major impact of the CMB comes from measurements of the power spectra of fluctuations in the temperature and polarization. The chapter ends with results derived from the power spectra obtained by the Planck mission, including values for the baryon, dark matter, and dark energy densities; the curvature of space; and the expansion rate of the Universe.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (14) ◽  
pp. 1350082 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHUO CAO ◽  
NAN LIANG

In order to test if there is energy transfer between dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM), we investigate cosmological constraints on two forms of nontrivial interaction between the DM sector and the sector responsible for the acceleration of the universe, in light of the newly revised observations including OHD, CMB, BAO and SNe Ia. More precisely, we find the same tendencies for both phenomenological forms of the interaction term Q = 3γHρ, i.e. the parameter γ to be a small number, |γ| ≈ 10-2. However, concerning the sign of the interaction parameter, we observe that γ > 0 when the interaction between dark sectors is proportional to the energy density of dust matter, whereas the negative coupling (γ < 0) is preferred by observations when the interaction term is proportional to DE density. We further discuss two possible explanations to this incompatibility and apply a quantitative criteria to judge the severity of the coincidence problem. Results suggest that the γm IDE model with a positive coupling may alleviate the coincidence problem, since its coincidence index C is smaller than that for the γd IDE model, the interacting quintessence and phantom models by four orders of magnitude.


Author(s):  
Engel Roza

It is shown that the Lambda component in the cosmological Lambda-CDM model can be conceived as vacuum energy, consisting of gravitational particles subject to Heisenberg&rsquo;s energy-time uncertainty. These particles can be modelled as elementary polarisable Dirac-type dipoles (&ldquo;darks&rdquo;) in a fluidal space at thermodynamic equilibrium, with spins that are subject to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Around the baryonic kernels, uniformly distributed in the universe, the spins are polarized, thereby invoking an increase of the effective gravitational strength of the kernels. It explains the dark matter effect to the extent that the numerical value of Milgrom&rsquo;s acceleration constant can be assessed by theory. Non-polarized vacuum particles beyond the baryonic kernels compose the dark energy. The result is a quantum mechanical interpretation of gravity in terms of quantitatively established shares in baryonic matter, dark matter and dark energy, which correspond with the values of the Lambda-CDM model..


2019 ◽  
Vol 490 (2) ◽  
pp. 2071-2085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiqiang Yang ◽  
Supriya Pan ◽  
Andronikos Paliathanasis ◽  
Subir Ghosh ◽  
Yabo Wu

ABSTRACT Unified cosmological models have received a lot of attention in astrophysics community for explaining both the dark matter and dark energy evolution. The Chaplygin cosmologies, a well-known name in this group have been investigated matched with observations from different sources. Obviously, Chaplygin cosmologies have to obey restrictions in order to be consistent with the observational data. As a consequence, alternative unified models, differing from Chaplygin model, are of special interest. In the present work, we consider a specific example of such a unified cosmological model, that is quantified by only a single parameter μ, that can be considered as a minimal extension of the Λ-cold dark matter cosmology. We investigate its observational boundaries together with an analysis of the universe at large scale. Our study shows that at early time the model behaves like a dust, and as time evolves, it mimics a dark energy fluid depicting a clear transition from the early decelerating phase to the late cosmic accelerating phase. Finally, the model approaches the cosmological constant boundary in an asymptotic manner. We remark that for the present unified model, the estimations of H0 are slightly higher than its local estimation and thus alleviating the H0 tension.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 1944002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyros Basilakos ◽  
Nick E. Mavromatos ◽  
Joan Solà Peracaula

We present a string-based picture of the cosmological evolution in which (CP-violating) gravitational anomalies acting during the inflationary phase of the universe cause the vacuum energy density to “run” with the effective Hubble parameter squared, [Formula: see text], thanks to the axion field of the bosonic string multiplet. This leads to baryogenesis through leptogenesis with massive right-handed neutrinos. The generation of chiral matter after inflation helps in cancelling the anomalies in the observable radiation- and matter-dominated eras. The present era inherits the same “running vacuum” structure triggered during the inflationary time by the axion field. The current dark energy is thus predicted to be mildly dynamical, and dark matter should be made of axions. Paraphrasing Carl Sagan [ https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10538.Carl_Sagan .]: we are all anomalously made from starstuff.


2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 1573-1579
Author(s):  
CHENGWU ZHANG ◽  
LIXIN XU ◽  
YONGLI PING ◽  
HONGYA LIU

We use a parameterized equation of state (EOS) of dark energy to a 5D Ricci-flat cosmological solution and suppose the universe contains two major components: dark matter and dark energy. Using the recent observational datasets: the latest 182 type Ia Supernovae Gold data, the three-year WMAP CMB shift parameter and the SDSS baryon acoustic peak, we obtain the best fit values of the EOS and two major components' evolution. We find that the best fit EOS crosses -1 in the near past where z ≃ 0.07, the present best fit value of wx(0) < -1 and for this model, the universe experiences the acceleration at about z ≃ 0.5.


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