Current observational constraints on cosmic doomsday
In a broad class of dark energy models, the universe may collapse within a finite time tc. Here we study a representative model of dark energy with a linear potential, V () = V0(1+α). This model is the simplest doomsday model, in which the universe collapses rather quickly after it stops expanding. Observational data from type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), cosmic microwave background anisotropy (CMB), and large scale structure (LSS) are complementary in constraining dark energy models. Using the new SN Ia data (the Riess sample), the CMB data from WMAP, and the LSS data from 2dF, we find that the collapse time of the universe is (24) Gyr from today at 68% (95%) confidence.

title: Constraints on generalized extended inflationary models.
abstract: We study the physical constraints on generalized extended inflationary theories, in which the Brans-Dicke field {Phi} couples to the inflaton sector in the form of two arbitrary power-law functions of {Phi}. We find that the most stringent constraints arise from the need to suppress large bubbles and from considerations of the density perturbations generated during extended inflation. We find that there are sizable portions of the parameter spaces in which all the constraints are satisfied.

title: Dark Energy Constraints from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
abstract: Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in the galaxy power spectrum allow us to extract the scale of the comoving sound horizon at recombination, a cosmological standard ruler accurately determined by the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data. We examine various issues important in the use of BAOs to probe dark energy. We find that if we assume a flat universe and priors on ?m, ?mh2, and ?bh2 as expected from the Planck mission, the constraints on dark energy parameters (w0, w') scale much less steeply with survey area than (area)-1/2 for a given redshift range. The constraints on the dark energy density ?X(z), however, do scale roughly with (area)-1/2 due to the strong correlation between H(z) and ?m (which reduces the effect of priors on ?m). Dark energy constraints from BAOs are very sensitive to the assumed linear scale of matter clustering and the redshift accuracy of the survey. For a BAO survey with 0.5 ? z ? 2, ? (R) = 0.4 [corresponding to kmax (z = 0) = 0.086 h Mpc-1], and ?z/ (1 + z) = 0.001, we find = (0.115,0.183) and (0.069, 0.104) for survey areas of 1000 and 10,000 deg2, respectively. We find that it is critical to minimize the bias in the scale estimates in order to derive reliable dark energy constraints. For a 1000 (10,000) deg2 BAO survey, a 1 ? bias in ln H (z) leads to a 2 ? (3 ?) bias in w'. The bias in w' due to the same scale bias from ln DA (z) is slightly smaller and opposite in sign. The results from this paper will be useful in assessing different proposed BAO surveys and guiding the design of optimal dark energy detection strategies.

title: Wavelets and WMAP non-Gaussianity
abstract: We study the statistical properties of the first-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data on different scales using the spherical Mexican hat wavelet transform. Consistent with the 2004 results of Vielva et al., we find a deviation from Gaussianity in the form of kurtosis of wavelet coefficients on 3-4 scales in the southern Galactic hemisphere. This paper extends the work of Vielva et al. as follows: We find that the non-Gaussian signal shows up more strongly in the form of a larger than expected number of cold pixels and also in the form of scale-scale correlations among wavelet coefficients. We establish the robustness of the non-Gaussian signal under more wide-ranging assumptions regarding the Galactic mask applied to the data and the noise statistics. This signal is unlikely to be due to the usual quadratic term parameterized by the nonlinearity parameter fNL. We use the skewness of the spherical Mexican hat wavelet coefficients to constrain fNL with the first-year WMAP data. Our results constrain fNL to be 50+/-80 at 68% confidence and less than 280 at 99% confidence.

title: Dark Energy Search with Supernovae
abstract: To determine the nature of dark energy from observational data, it is important that we use model-independent and optimal methods. We should probe dark energy using its density (allowed to be a free function of cosmic time) instead of its equation of state. We should minimize gravitational lensing effect on supernovae by flux-averaging. We need to include complementary data (for example, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS)) in a consistent manner to help break the degeneracy between the dark energy density and the matter density fraction. We should push for ambitious future supernova surveys that can observe a large number of supernovae at the highest possible redshifts. I discuss these and other issues that will be important in our quest to unravel the mystery of the nature of dark energy. Current supernova, CMB, and LSS data already rule out dark energy models with dark energy densities that vary greatly with time; with the cosmological constant model providing an excellent fit to the data. A precise measurement of dark energy density as a free function of cosmic time will have a fundamental impact on particle physics and cosmology.

title: A robust distance measurement and dark energy constraints from the spherically averaged correlation function of Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red Galaxies
abstract: We measure the effective distance to z = 0.26, DV (0.26), and mh 2 from the overall shape of the spherically-averaged two-point correlati on function of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) volume-limited luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample, without assuming a dark energy model or a flat Universe. We giv e the mean and covariance matrix of DV (0.26), mh 2 , bh 2 , and ns. We show that these provide an efficient and accurate summary of the volume-limited LRG data. With flat priors on bh 2 and ns (7σWMAP7), we find mh 2 = 0.131 ± 0.020, and rs/DV (0.26) = 0.1466 +0.0068 0.0073 (the ratio of the sound horizon at the drag epoch to the effective distance to z = 0.26). We find that measurements of mh 2 or m are biased low if flux-limited (instead of volume-limited) L RG sample is used. By scaling the spherically-averaged correlation fun ction, we find the Hubble parameter H(0.26) = 79 +12 13 km s 1 Mpc 1 and the angular diameter distance DA(0.26) = 848 +86 88 Mpc. Combining our results with the cosmic microwave background and supernova data, we obtain k = 0.0059 +0.0092 0.0093 andw = 1.023 +0.054 0.053 (assuming a constant dark energy equation of state). We use LasDamas SDSS mock catalogs to compute the covariance matrix of the correlation function, and investigate the use of lognormal catal ogs as an alternative. We find that the input correlation function can be accurately recovered from lognormal catalogs, although they give larger errors on all scales (especially on small sc ales) compared to the mock catalogs derived from cosmological N-body simulations.

title: D2 Chern-Simons Gravity
abstract: We study the theory that contains two spin-2 fields. This theory can be regarded as a simplified version of higher spin gravity in AdS3. It can be formulated either in the first order formulation or in the second order formulation. From the first order formulation we construct the black holes in the theory and study the thermodynamics of this black holes with the help of dual holographic OPE. From the higher spin point of view, this black hole is most naturally regarded as a black hole with a spin-2 hair. In the second order formulation, we obtain an action for the metric and extra spin-2 fields and analyze the corresponding black holes. Even though for some simple cases, the conventional notions, such as the horizon, may help us to read part of the information of the black hole, they break down in generic cases. On the other hand, the action in the second order formulation could be rewritten in the form of a decoupled AdS3 bi-gravity. Moreover, the entropy of the black hole with the spin-2 hair could be reproduced from the AdS3 bi-gravity in the Euclidean path-integral formalism.

title: Inhomogeneous vacuum energy
abstract: Vacuum energy remains the simplest model of dark energy which could drive the accelerated expansion of the Universe without necessarily introducing any new degrees of freedom. Inhomogeneous vacuum energy is necessarily interacting in general relativity. Although the 4-velocity of vacuum energy is undefined, an interacting vacuum has an energy transfer and the vacuum energy defines a particular foliation of spacetime. In particular we will discuss cosmological solutions where the background vacuum energy is spatially homogeneous. It is possible to give a consistent description of vacuum dynamics and in particular the relativistic equations of motion for spatially inhomogeneous perturbations given a covariant prescription for the vacuum energy, or equivalently the energy transfer 4-vector, and we construct gauge-invariant vacuum perturbations. We show that any dark energy cosmology can be decomposed into an interacting vacuum+matter cosmology whose inhomogeneous perturbations obey simple first-order equations.

title: Cosmological constraints on the generalized holographic dark energy
abstract: We use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to investigate global constraints on the generalized holographic (GH) dark energy with flat and non-flat universe from the current observed data: the Union2 dataset of type supernovae Ia (SNIa), high-redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), the observational Hubble data (OHD), the cluster X-ray gas mass fraction, the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. The most stringent constraints on the GH model parameter are obtained. In addition, it is found that the equation of state for this generalized holographic dark energy can cross over the phantom boundary wde=−1.

title: Modified Chaplygin gas as a unified dark matter and dark energy model and cosmic constraints
abstract: A modified Chaplygin gas model (MCG), ρMCG/ρMCG0=[Bs+(1−Bs)a−3(1+B)(1+α)]1/(1+α), as a unified dark matter model and dark energy model, is constrained by using current available cosmic observational data points which include type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillation and the 7-year full WMAP data points. As a contrast to the consideration in the literature, we do not separate the MCG into two components, i.e. dark mater and dark energy component, but we take it as a whole energy component—a unified dark sector. By using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, a tight constraint is obtained: $\alpha= 0.000727_{- 0.00140- 0.00234}^{+ 0.00142+ 0.00391}$, $B=0.000777_{- 0.000302- 0.000697}^{+ 0.000201+ 0.000915}$ and $B_{s}= 0.782_{- 0.0162- 0.0329}^{+ 0.0163+ 0.0307}$.

title: Central gas entropy excess as direct evidence for AGN feedback in galaxy groups and clusters
abstract: By analyzing Chandra X-ray data of a sample of 21 galaxy groups and 19 galaxy clusters, we find that in 31 sample systems there exists a significant central ( R ≤10 h -1 71 kpc) gas entropy excess (∆ K 0 ), which corresponds to ≃ 0.1 - 0.5 keV per gas particle, beyond the power-law model that best fits the radial entropy profile of the outer regions. We also find a distinct correlation between the central entropy excess ∆ K 0 and K-band luminosity LK of the central dominating galaxies (CDGs), which is scaled as ∆ K 0 ∝ L 1.6±0.4 K , where L K is tightly associated with the mass of the supermassive black hole hosted in the CDG. In fact, if an effective mass-to-energy conversion- efficiency of 0.02 is assumed for the accretion process, the cumulative AGN feedback E AGN feedback ≃ ηM BH c 2 yields an extra heating of ≃0.5 - 17.0 keV per particle, which is sufficient to explain the central entropy excess. In most cases, the AGN contribution can compensate the radiative loss of the X-ray gas within the cooling radius ( ≃0.002 - 2.2 keV per particle), and apparently exceeds the energy required to cause the scaling relations to deviate from the self-similar predictions ( ≃0.2 - 1.0 keV per particle). In contrast to the AGN feedback, the extra heating provided by supernova explosions accounts for ≃0.01 - 0.08 keV per particle in groups and is almost negligible in clusters. Therefore, the observed correlation between ∆ K 0 and L K can be considered as direct evidence for AGN feedback in galaxy groups and clusters.