Search

We give a brief review of some aspects of inhomogeneous viscous fluids in a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Universe. In general, it is pointed out that several fluid models may bring the future Universe evolution to become singular, with the appearance of the so-called Big Rip scenario. We investigate the effects of fluids coupled with dark matter in a de Sitter Universe, by considering several cases. Due to this coupling, the coincidence problem may be solved, and if the de Sitter solution is stable, the model is also protected against the Big Rip singularity.

Recently the so-called mimetic gravity approach has been used to obtain corrections to the Friedmann equation of General Relativity similar to the ones present in loop quantum cosmology. In this paper, we propose an alternative way to derive this modified Friedmann equation via the so-called non-polynomial gravity approach, which consists of adding geometric non-polynomial higher derivative terms to Hilbert–Einstein action, which are nonetheless polynomials and lead to a second-order differential equation in Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker space-times. Our explicit action turns out to be a realization of the Helling proposal of effective action with an infinite number of terms. The model is also investigated in the presence of a non-vanishing cosmological constant, and a new exact bounce solution is found and studied.