2017/05/08 by Christine R. Farrugia, Joseph Sultana
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #COSMIC cancer database #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curvature #Dark energy #Dark matter #Flatness (cosmology) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Inflation (cosmology) #Metric expansion of space #Observational cosmology #Universe #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0218271817501152
published as Electronic version of an article published as Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, Vol. 26, No. 10, 1750115 (2017) [copyright World Scientific Publishing Company] [https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijmpd] · 30 pages, 29 figures
openalex publication_date 2017/05/08 · openalex created_date 2017/05/19 · arxiv created 2019/07/17 · arxiv updated 2019/07/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
As evidenced by a great number of works in the literature, it is common practice to assume that the universe is flat. However, the majority of studies which make use of observational data to constrain the curvature density parameter are premised on the [Formula: see text]CDM cosmology, or extensions thereof. On the other hand, when data is fitted to models with a time-varying dark energy equation-of-state, it turns out that such models may accommodate a non-flat universe. Several authors caution that if the assumption of spatial flatness is wrong, it could greatly hinder our understanding of dark energy, even if the curvature is in reality very small. We thus consider a number of different dynamical dark energy models that represent the complete cosmological scenario, and investigate the effects of spatial curvature on the evolution. We find that for a closed universe, the transition to the epoch of decelerated expansion would be delayed with respect to the flat case. So would the start of the current dark energy-dominated era. This would be accompanied by a larger inflationary acceleration, as well as a larger subsequent deceleration. The opposite behavior is observed if the universe is open.