Geometric and physical properties of closed ever expanding dust models

Abstract

Current observations suggest that our Universe is not incompatible with a small positive spatial curvature that can be associated with rest frames having a "closed" standard topology. We examine a toy model generalisation of the $\Lambda$CDM model in the form of ever expanding Lema\^{i}tre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) models with positive spatial curvature. It is well known that such models with $\Lambda=0$ exhibit a thin layer distribution at the turning values of the area distance that must be studied through the Israel-Lanczos formalism. We find that this distributional source exhibits an unphysical behaviour for large cosmic times and its presence can be detected observationally. However, these unphysical features can always be avoided by assuming $\Lambda >0$. While these LTB models are very simplified, we believe that these results provide a simple argument favouring the assumption of a nonzero positive cosmological constant in cosmological models.