Cosmodynamics: Energy conditions, Hubble bounds, density bounds, time and distance bounds

TL;DR

This paper uses classical energy conditions in general relativity to derive bounds on key cosmological parameters like Hubble parameter, density, and distance, and compares these bounds with recent supernova observations.

Contribution

It extends previous work by providing refined bounds on cosmological parameters using energy conditions and compares them with observational data.

Findings

Bounds on H(z), Omega(z), rho(z), d(z), T(z) derived from energy conditions.

Comparison of theoretical bounds with supernova data.

Demonstration of the utility of energy conditions in cosmological parameter estimation.

Abstract

We refine and extend a programme initiated by one of the current authors [Science 276 (1997) 88; Phys. Rev. D56 (1997) 7578] advocating the use of the classical energy conditions of general relativity in a cosmological setting to place very general bounds on various cosmological parameters. We show how the energy conditions can be used to bound the Hubble parameter H(z), Omega parameter Omega(z), density rho(z), distance d(z), and lookback time T(z) as (relatively) simple functions of the redshift z, present-epoch Hubble parameter H_0, and present-epoch Omega parameter Omega_0. We compare these results with related observations in the literature, and confront the bounds with the recent supernova data.