One focus of research in cosmology regards the growth of structure in the universe: how we end up with stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and large scale structure in a universe that appears homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. Using cosmological perturbation theory, we investigate the evolution of density and velocity perturbations corresponding to a universe that is slowly contracting (Ijjas and Steinhardt), testing with and comparing different values for the equation-of-state parameter. This allows for the comparison of the growth of large scale structure in scenarios including a matter-dominated expanding universe, a dark energy-dominated expanding universe, and now, an ekpyrotic scalar field-dominated contracting universe. Further, we consider the timescales on which deviations from ΛCDM in favor of the model considered could become relevant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-2659 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Creators | Bitcon, Olivia R |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Honors Undergraduate Theses |
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