Search

The unexpected dimness of Type Ia supernovae (SNe), apparently due to accelerated expansion driven by some form of dark energy or modified gravity, has led to attempts to explain the observations using only general relativity with baryonic and cold dark matter, but by dropping the standard assumption of homogeneity on Hubble scales. In particular, the SN data can be explained if we live near the centre of a Hubble-scale void. However, such void models have been shown to be inconsistent with various observations, assuming the void consists of a pure growing mode. Here it is shown that models with significant decaying mode contribution today can be ruled out on the basis of the expected cosmic microwave background spectral distortion. This essentially closes one of the very few remaining loopholes in attempts to rule out void models, and strengthens the evidence for Hubble-scale homogeneity., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; discussion expanded, appendix added; version accepted to Phys. Rev. D

There has been considerable recent interest in cosmological models in which the current apparent acceleration is due to a very large local underdensity, or void, instead of some form of dark energy. Here we examine a new proposal to constrain such models using the linear kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect due to structure within the void. The simplified "Hubble bubble" models previously studied appeared to predict far more kSZ power than is actually observed, independently of the details of the initial conditions and evolution of perturbations in such models. We show that the constraining power of the kSZ effect is considerably weakened (though still impressive) under a fully relativistic treatment of the problem, and point out several theoretical ambiguities and observational shortcomings which further qualify the results. Nevertheless, we conclude that a very large class of void models is ruled out by the combination of kSZ and other methods., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures; minor changes, version published in CQG focus section "Inhomogeneous Cosmological Models and Averaging in Cosmology"

Statistically anomalous signals in the microwave background have been extensively studied in general in multipole space, and in real space mainly for circular and other simple patterns. In this paper we search for a range of non-trivial patterns in the temperature data from WMAP 7-year observations. We find a very significant detection of a number of such features and discuss their consequences for the essential character of the cosmos., Comment: 7 Pages; Considering submission to the Journal Of Cosmology

Physical constants and cosmological parameters could vary with position. On the largest scales such variations would manifest themselves as gradients across our Hubble volume, leading to dipole-modulation of the cosmic microwave anisotropies. This generically leads to a correlation between adjacent multipoles in the spherical harmonics expansion of the sky, a distinctive signal which should be searched for in future data sets., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

There has been considerable interest in recent years in cosmological models in which we inhabit a very large, underdense void as an alternative to dark energy. A longstanding objection to this proposal is that observations limit our position to be very close to the void centre. By selecting from a family of void profiles that fit supernova luminosity data, we carefully determine how far from the centre we could be. To do so, we use the observed dipole component of the cosmic microwave background, as well as an additional stochastic peculiar velocity arising from primordial perturbations. We find that we are constrained to live within 80 Mpc of the centre of a void--a somewhat weaker constraint than found in previous studies, but nevertheless a strong violation of the Copernican principle. By considering how such a Gpc-scale void would appear on the microwave sky, we also show that there can be a maximum of one of these voids within our Hubble radius. Hence, the constraint on our position corresponds to a fraction of the Hubble volume of order 10^{-8}. Finally, we use the fact that void models only look temporarily similar to a cosmological-constant-dominated universe to argue that these models are not free of temporal fine-tuning., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; revised to match accepted version

The suggestion that we occupy a privileged position near the centre of a large, nonlinear, and nearly spherical void has recently attracted much attention as an alternative to dark energy. Putting aside the philosophical problems with this scenario, we perform the most complete and up-to-date comparison with cosmological data. We use supernovae and the full cosmic microwave background spectrum as the basis of our analysis. We also include constraints from radial baryonic acoustic oscillations, the local Hubble rate, age, big bang nucleosynthesis, the Compton y-distortion, and for the first time include the local amplitude of matter fluctuations, \sigma_8. These all paint a consistent picture in which voids are in severe tension with the data. In particular, void models predict a very low local Hubble rate, suffer from an "old age problem", and predict much less local structure than is observed., Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures; v2 adds models in closed backgrounds; conclusions strengthened; version accepted to Phys. Rev. D