kristobal hunta said:
I am graduate student working now at the project in cosmology. I would appreciate any links or references to the papers or publications casting a light on the problem of accelerated expansion of the universe.
Did they found the rate of accelerated expansion?
please look at this easy survey paper
"Making Sense of the New Cosmology"
by Michael Turner
http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0202008
he is at Chicago and is one of the most eminent of today's cosmologists
you can rely on what he says
it is representative of the main consensus
(but the numbers are sharper in more recent papers)
the acceleration of expansion is measured by the dimensionless number q
see the definition of q on page 7 near the bottom
see equation (1) on page 7
where you see the quantity R"/R which measures acceleration
is given by the second Friedmann equation
R is the scale factor in the RW metric (the standard metric used in cosmology),
R is usually normalized so it is equal to 1 at present time
and the increase in R tracks the expansion
R' is the increase rate (the time derivative) of R
R'' is the increase in the increase in R
to get rid of units and get a more pure number we can divide first by R
R''/R has dimension of reciprocal time
2
that is it is a "per second per second" or a "per year per year" type of quantity
Now one can further normalize this if one divides by the square of the H parameter, because the H parameter is itself a reciprocal time!
therefore one can have a pure dimensionless number that expresses the amount of acceleration if one writes
\frac{R''}{R H^2}
this is the q which he mentions
it would be good to know this number since it expresses how much acceleration there is
also he talks about why we know about this
(from the 1998 supernova observations)
also this article by Lineweaver is good
http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0305179