Sudden Future Singularity models as an alternative to dark energy?

Abstract

Current observational evidence does not yet exclude the possibility that dark energy could be in the form of phantom energy. A universe consisting of a phantom constituent will be driven towards a drastic end known as the 'Big Rip' singularity where all the matter in the universe will be destroyed. Motivated by this possibility, other evolutionary scenarios have been explored by Barrow, including the phenomena which he called Sudden Future Singularities (SFSs). In such a model it is possible to have a blow up of the pressure occurring at sometime in the future evolution of the universe while the energy density would remain unaffected. The particular evolution of the scale factor of the universe in this model that results in a singular behaviour of the pressure also admits acceleration in the current era. In this paper we will present the results of our confrontation of one example class of SFS models with the available cosmological data from high-redshift SNe, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We then discuss the viability of the model in question as an alternative to dark energy. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.