Abstract. We study the effects of inhomogeneities on the evolution of the Universe, by considering a range of cosmological models with discretized matter content. This is done using exact and fully relativistic methods that exploit the symmetries in and about submanifolds of spacetimes that themselves possess no continuous global symmetries. These methods allow us to follow the evolution of our models throughout their entire history, far beyond what has previously been possible. We find that while some space-like curves collapse to anisotropic singularities in finite time, others remain nonsingular forever. The resulting picture is of a cosmological spacetime in which some behaviour remains close to Friedmann-like, while other behaviours deviate radically. In particular, we find that large-scale acceleration is possible without any violation of the energy conditions.

We show that it is possible to locate the event horizon of a black hole (in arbitrary dimensions) by the zeros of certain Cartan invariants. This approach accounts for the recent results on the detection of stationary horizons using scalar polynomial curvature invariants, and improves upon them since the proposed method is computationally less expensive. As an application, we produce Cartan invariants that locate the event horizons for various exact four-dimensional and five-dimensional stationary, asymptotically flat (or (anti) de Sitter), black hole solutions and compare the Cartan invariants with the corresponding scalar curvature invariants that detect the event horizon.

We consider a family of cosmological models in which all mass is confined to a regular lattice of identical black holes. By exploiting the reflection symmetry about planes that bisect these lattices into identical halves, we are able to consider the evolution of a number of geometrically distinguished surfaces that exist within each of them. We find that the evolution equations for the reflection symmetric surfaces can be written as a simple set of Friedmann-like equations, with source terms that behave like a set of interacting effective fluids. We then show that gravitational waves are effectively trapped within small chambers for all time, and are not free to propagate throughout the space-time. Each chamber therefore evolves as if it were in isolation from the rest of the universe. We call this phenomenon 'piecewise silence'.

We examine the effect that the magnetic part of the Weyl tensor has on the large-scale expansion of space. This is done within the context of a class of cosmological models that contain regularly arranged discrete masses, rather than a continuous perfect fluid. The natural set of geodesic curves that one should use to consider the cosmological expansion of these models requires the existence of a non-zero magnetic part of the Weyl tensor. We include this object in the evolution equations of these models by performing a Taylor series expansion about a hypersurface where it initially vanishes. At the same cosmological time, measured as a fraction of the age of the universe, we find that the influence of the magnetic part of the Weyl tensor increases as the number of masses in the universe is increased. We also find that the influence of the magnetic part of the Weyl tensor increases with time, relative to the leading-order electric part, so that its contribution to the scale of the universe can reach values of ∼1%, before the Taylor series approximation starts to break down.

We consider a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe with a fluid source obeying a non-ideal equation of state with "asymptotic freedom," namely ideal gas behavior (pressure changes directly proportional to density changes) both at low and high density regimes, following a fluid dynamical model due to Shan and Chen. It is shown that, starting from an ordinary energy density component, such fluids naturally evolve towards a universe with a substantial "dark energy" component at the present time, with no need of invoking any cosmological constant. Moreover, we introduce a quantitative indicator of darkness abundance, which provides a consistent picture of the actual matter-energy content of the universe.

Using the Geroch transformation we obtain the first example of an exact stiff fluid spike solution to the Einstein field equations in a closed form exhibiting a spacelike G1 group of symmetries (i.e., with a single isometry). This new solution is of Petrov type I and exhibits a spike crossing which persists to the past, which allows us to better understand spike crossings in the context of structure formation.

In this paper, applying the Hartman-Grobman theorem we carry out a qualitative late-time analysis of some unified dark energy-matter Friedmann cosmological models, where the two interact through linear energy exchanges, and the dark energy fluid obeys to the dynamical equation of state of Redlich-Kwong, Modified Berthelot, and Dieterici respectively. The identification of appropriate late-time attractors allows to restrict the range of validity of the free parameters of the models under investigation. We show that the strength of deviation from an ideal fluid for the dark energy does not influence the stability of the late-time attractors, as well as the values of all the cosmological parameters at equilibrium, but for the Hubble function (which represents the age of the universe). Our analysis also shows that a singularity in the effective equation of state parameter for the dark energy fluid is not possible within this class of models.

In this paper, after reconstructing the redshift evolution of the Hubble function by adopting Gaussian process techniques, we estimate the best-fit parameters for some flat Friedmann cosmological models based on a modified Chaplygin gas interacting with dark matter. In fact, the expansion history of the Universe will be investigated because passively evolving galaxies constitute cosmic chronometers. An estimate for the present-day values of the deceleration parameter, adiabatic speed of sound within the dark energy fluid, effective dark energy, and dark matter equation of state parameters is provided. By this, we mean that the interaction term between the two dark fluids, which breaks the Bianchi symmetries, will be interpreted as an effective contribution to the dark matter pressure similarly to the framework of the “Generalized Dark Matter”. We investigate whether the estimates of the Hubble constant and of the present-day abundance of dark matter are sensitive to the dark matter–dark energy coupling. We will also show that the cosmic chronometers data favor a cold dark matter, and that our findings are in agreement with the Le Châtelier–Braun principle according to which dark energy should decay into dark matter.