SPA6311 Physical Cosmology, Spring 2016

Exercise sheet 5 Dr. K. Malik

These questions are designed to help you understand the material covered in the lectures.
Exercise sheets will typically be made available online sometime Wednesday or Thursday.
Please hand the solutions in by the following Thursday, 1600 (after reading week). Put
your full name and student number on the top of your solutions.

1. Show that in a flat universe dominated by a fluid with equation of state P = wρc2
the decceleration parameter is given by
1
q = (1 + 3w) .
2
For what values of w does the universe accelerate?

[30 pts.]

2. In a flat universe containing matter and a cosmological constant, the matter density
paramter Ωm (z) can be expressed as

Ωm,0 (1 + z)3
Ωm (z) = ,
Ωm,0 (1 + z)3 + 1 − Ωm,0

as shown later in the lectures.

If Ωm,0 = 0.25, at what red-shift does the universe start accelerating? You may also
want to use the expression for the decceleration parameter for this case which we
will also derive later in the lectures:
3Ωm
q= − 1.
2

[ 40 pts.]

3. In an alternate universe the neutron half-life is 100 seconds rather than 614 seconds.
Estimate the fraction of the baryonic matter which is in the form of helium at the
end of nucleosynthesis in this universe.

[30 pts.]