CosmoCoffee

Hey Cosmologists of the Cup,

I am going nuts; about a month ago, I found a brane cosmology paper that discussed the use of "shortcuts" in the bulk to explain the dark energy problem.

The basic idea being that light is stuck to the brane and so the CMB and supernovae appear more distant, but since gravity can propagate through the bulk, the gravitational dynamics are actually that of a "smaller" universe (i.e., the universe can be pure matter domination, but the luminosity and angular distance relations are altered.) At least, this was the trivial "cartoon" I took away -- the story is obviously going to be much smarter than this.

Now I can't find the paper and I have tried every possible keyword combination I can think of. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

Failing that, I have this great idea about how to explain dark energy using shortcuts in the bulk. Anyone want to write the paper with me?

Thanks,

Simon

PS: I realize that an answer to this question may not definitively settle whether or not I am crazy.

I remember this paper, too. I think it came out a few years ago.
Bob Scherrer

I suspect I was thinking of this paper: astro-ph/0202066, which does not address your specific idea.

Bob Scherrer

This is the general idea for all the braneworld models, the most studied of which is the self-accelearting DGP model. I think all these models contain instabilities of one kind or another.

Thanks Robert and Niayesh! I haven't looked at the DGP models in detail, but now I know where to go.

Olivier pointed me to the paper I was thinking of:

gr-qc/0103070

Thanks Cosmocoffee!