18–22 Apr 2011
Palais des Papes, Avignon
Europe/Paris timezone

Dark energy and inhomogeneity

19 Apr 2011, 16:10
20m
Chambre du Trésorier (Palais des Papes, Avignon)

Chambre du Trésorier

Palais des Papes, Avignon

Speaker

Chris Clarkson (University of Cape Town)

Description

I discuss how the averaging problem confuses our potential understanding of dark energy by considering the backreaction from density perturbations to second-order in the concordance model: this effect leads to at least a 10% increase in the dynamical value of the deceleration parameter, and could be significantly higher. Large Hubble-scale inhomogeneity has not been investigated in much detail, and could conceivably be the cause of apparent cosmic acceleration. I discuss void models which defy the Copernican principle in our Hubble patch, and describe how we can potentially rule out these models.

Primary author

Chris Clarkson (University of Cape Town)

Presentation materials