Accelerating Universe: Dark Energy vs Modified Gravity / Seminar Series (2)

Speaker:Shant Baghram
Affiliation:Sharif University of Technology
Title: Accelerating Universe: Dark Energy vs Modified Gravity
Date: 21 January 2011
Place: ING+NOT Astro-seminar- Santa Cruz-La Palma- Spain

Abstract:

First, I will give a very brief description of the accelerating universe state and its cosmological evidence like SNIa, CMB and the LSS. Then I propose the Cosmological constants (LCDM-model) and its alternative Dark energy (DE) and Modified gravity (MG) models as plausible candidates for describing the accelerating Universe. Some cosmological observations, especially large scale structure probes such as matter power spectrum, the ISW effect and growth index are discussed later, as useful tools to distinguish between viable DE and MG models which are equivalent in predicting the background dynamics of  Universe. Finally, the reconstruction of the dynamics method as a probable way for investigating the problem is introduced, and the future prospects on the issue is discussed.