Higher-order theories of gravity have recently attracted a lot of interest as alternative candidates to explain the observed cosmic acceleration without the need of introducing any scalar field. A critical ingredient is the choice of the function $f(R)$ of the Ricci scalar curvature entering the gravity Lagrangian and determining the dynamics of the Universe. We describe an efficient procedure to reconstruct $f(R)$ from the Hubble parameter $H$ depending on the redshift $z$. Using the metric formulation of $f(R)$ theories, we derive a third order linear differential equation for $f[R(z)]$ which can be numerically solved after setting the boundary conditions on the basis of physical considerations. Since $H(z)$ can be reconstructed from the astrophysical data, the method we present makes it possible to determine, in principle, what is the $f(R)$ theory which best reproduces the observed cosmological dynamics. Moreover, the method allows to reconcile dark energy models with $f(R)$ theories finding out what is the expression of $f(R)$ which leads to the same $H(z)$ of the given quintessence model. As interesting examples, we consider “quiessence” (dark energy with constant equation of state) and the Chaplygin gas.

We investigate the possibility that the observed flatness of the rotation curves of spiral galaxies is not evidence for the existence of dark matter

We investigate the effects of viscosity terms depending on the Hubble parameter and its derivatives in the dark energy equation of state. Such terms are possible if dark energy is a fictitious fluid originating from corrections to the Einstein general relativity as is the case for some braneworld inspired models or fourth order gravity. We consider two classes of models whose singularities in the early and late time universe have been studied by testing the models against the dimensionless coordinate distance to Type Ia Supernovae and radio galaxies also including priors on the shift and the acoustic peak parameters. It turns out that both models are able to explain the observed cosmic speed up without the need of phantom ($w<-1$) dark energy.

Based only on the assumption that the Universe is homogenous and isotropic on large scales, cosmography is an ideal tool to investigate the cosmic expansion history in an almost model-independent way. Fitting the data on the luminosity distance and baryon acoustic oscillations allows to determine the confidence ranges for the cosmographic parameters hence giving some quantitative constraints that at whatever theory has to fulfill. As an application, we consider here the case of teleparallel gravity also referred to as f(T) gravity. To this end, we first work out analytical expressions to express the present day values of f(T) derivatives as a function of the cosmographic parameters, which hold under quite general and physically motivated conditions. We then use the constraints coming from cosmography to find out the confidence ranges for f(T) derivatives up to the fifth order and show how these can be used to check the viability of given teleparallel gravity models without the need to explicitly solve the second order dynamic equations.

γ-ray bursts (GRBs) have recently attracted much attention as a possible way to extend the Hubble diagram to a very high redshift. However, the large scatter in their intrinsic properties prevents directly using them as a distance indicator so that the hunt is open for a relation involving an observable property to standardize GRBs in the same way as the Phillips law makes it possible to use Type Ia supernovae as standardizable candles. We use here the data on the X-ray decay curve and spectral index of a sample of GRBs observed with the Swift satellite. These data are used as input to a Bayesian statistical analysis looking for a correlation between the X-ray luminosity LX(Ta) and the time constant Ta of the afterglow curve. We find a linear relation between log [LX(Ta)] and log [Ta/(1 +z)] with an intrinsic scatter σint= 0.33 comparable to previously reported relations. Remarkably, both the slope and the intrinsic scatter are almost independent on the matter density ΩM and the constant equation of state w of the dark energy component thus suggesting that the circularity problem is alleviated for the LX–Ta relation.