Preface: Ann. Phys. 4–5/2006

Abstract

PrefaceAfter the discovery of supersymmetry in the seventies of the 20th century, there was a rapid development of the ideas related to the unification of gauge interactions with gravity within the framework of superstring theory. The application of superstring theory to cosmology began with the most explored example of the pre-big-bang scenario of M. Gasperini and G. Veneziano of 1991 and on. From superstring theory the theoreticians were led into brane theory, or rather to M-theory, which also became an inspiration to cosmologists. The Hořava-Witten and Randall-Sundrum brane scenarios, together with ekpyrotic/cyclic scenario, were the most successful results of these investigations. Since these scenarios are based on theories of the unification of all the fundamental interactions in the universe, it was natural to call them cosmology of fundamental theories, fundamental cosmology or, in short, COSMOFUN.The idea of fundamental cosmology brought together a group of European cosmologists during the last couple of years: the informal COSMOFUN activity was designed to form a more regular group that could effectively collaborate, train young scientists, organize conferences and workshops. One of these pioneering activities was the "Pomeranian Workshop in Fundamental Cosmology" which took place in September 2005 in Pobierowo -a beautiful resort at the Baltic sea in the north-western part of Poland -the region called Pomerania. As an organizer I noticed that the participants enjoyed this area very much.During the workshop, which was attended by about 30 scientists, ideas in fundamental cosmology were exchanged and vividly discussed. There were invited lectures as well as short talks. The former have been collected in the form of review papers and are presented in the current issue.

Exotic-singularity-driven dark energy

“…This means the strongest of SFS type singularities is more likely to become reality. A practical tool to recognize SFSs well in advance is to measure possible large values of statefinders [20,21,22,23,24] which are the higher-order characteristics of the universe expansion which go beyond the Hubble parameter and the deceleration parameter H = ȧ/a , q = − äa/ ȧ2 . They can generally be expressed as (i ≥ 2) [21] x…”