Cosmic Acceleration: History and Evolution

Abstract

Late time cosmic acceleration of the Universe is one of the biggest and most interesting discovery of our time. It is supported by a number of observational investigations such as Type Ia supernova, cosmic microwave background radiation, surveys of large scale structure, and Planck 2018 results. In the standard framework based upon Einstein gravity, cosmic acceleration can be explained by an exotic fluid with large negative pressure filling the Universe, dubbed `dark energy'. The simplest candidate for dark energy is the cosmological constant Λ. In this chapter, we shall focus on the basic ingredients of the standard model of Universe, Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric, cosmological parameters, evidences of late time cosmic acceleration, cosmological observations, and the theoretical models of dark energy in the form of exotic matter and the large scale modification of gravity.