Transition from decelerated to accelerated cosmic expansion in braneworld universes (Q818870)

In the paper the accelerated cosmic expansion as a consequence of embedding our observable universe as a brane in extra dimensions is studied. The paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 a brief summary of the equations for homogeneous cosmologies in 5D based on braneworld theory is given. In Sect. 3 it is shown how one can incorporate a varying vacuum energy into the scheme. Observational constraints on the model are discussed in Sect. 4. In Sect. 5 the transition from deceleration to acceleration is discussed. It is shown that the crossover point strongly depends on the energy density of ordinary matter. It is also shown that the value of the deceleration parameter today is bounded below. The author discusses the cosmological parameters for the case where the matter density today is one-third of the critical density. It is found that the future evolution of the universe crucially depends on the time when vacuum starts to dominate over ordinary matter. In Sect. 6 it is shown that the original Cardassian expansion, as well as dark energy models can be interpreted as the low energy limit of the presented ever-expanding models.