We revise the conditions for the physical viability of a cosmological model in which dark matter has bulk viscosity and also interacts with dark energy. We have also included radiation and baryonic matter components; all matter components are represented by perfect fluids, except the dark matter, that is treated as an imperfect fluid. We impose upon the model the condition of a complete cosmological dynamics that results in an either null or negative bulk viscosity, but the latter also disagrees with the Local Second Law of Thermodynamics. The model is also compared with cosmological observations at different redshifts: type Ia supernova, the shift parameter of CMB, the acoustic peak of BAO, and the Hubble parameter H(z). In general, observations consistently point out to a negative value of the bulk viscous coefficient, and in overall the fitting procedure shows no preference for the model over the standard ΛCDM model. PACS numbers: 95.36.+x, 98.80.Es

We apply the dynamical systems tools to study the linear dynamics of a self-interacting scalar field trapped in the braneworld, for a wide variety of self-interaction potentials. We focus on RandallSundrum (RS) and on Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) braneworld models exclusively. These models are complementary to each other: while the RS brane produces ultra-violet (UV) corrections to general relativity, the DGP braneworld modifies Einstein's theory at large scales, i. e., produces infra-red (IR) modifications of general relativity. This study of the asymptotic properties of both braneworld models, shows -in the phase space -the way the dynamics of a scalar field trapped in the brane departs from standard general relativity behaviour.

We investigate the phase-space structure of the quintom dark energy paradigm in the framework of spatially flat and homogeneous universe. Considering arbitrary decoupled potentials, we find certain general conditions under which the phantom dominated solution is late time attractor, generalizing previous results found for the case of exponential potential. Center Manifold Theory is employed to obtain sufficient conditions for the instability of de Sitter solution either with phantom or quintessence potential dominance.