BransDicke Cosmology and Accelerated Exlansion

[Quantizer]

I have just seen this paper on constructing a cosmology for the accelerated expansion of the universe through BransDicke theory

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.4291v1.pdfBesides this approach

What are the alternative or leading cosmological theories that can predict to some fairly strong confidence the accelerating expansion of the universe

 

[Mordred]

The concordance model is $\Lambda$CDM. Though its certainly not the only model that can show the expansion history. The FLRW metrics of the Lambda CDM can easily do that.. its also the model most used in most of the cosmology textbooks

 

[Matterwave]

Einstein's general relativity has a cosmological constant term in it which produces, as far as I know, exactly the accelerated expansion we observe. So, that's one alternative, and perhaps the simplest alternative.

Now if you are asking what theories will give you this value for the cosmological constant (since it's a constant of integration in Einstein's GR, there's no way internally to the theory of predicting this constant), then there are myriad attempted possibilities with varying degrees of success (none are very close to being successful as far as I know). The accelerated expansion of the universe is, at this point, a mystery.

 

[Mordred]

Forgot to mention another strong model is loop quantum cosmology LQC. If your interested in fields in general to describe many of the aspects of cosmology I recommend this free textbook.

"Fields"

http://arxiv.org/abs/hepth/9912205

a free textbook for LCDM can be found here

ASTROPHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY
http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0004188v1.pdf

can't help on LQC as I study LCDM

for the various metrics of GR and SR I recommend
"Lecture Notes on General Relativity" by Matthias Blau

http://www.blau.itp.unibe.ch/newlecturesGR.pdf

I'm still studying the last article myself