Cosmology with variable parameters and effective equation of state for dark energy
A cosmological constant, Λ, is the most natural candidate to explain the origin of the dark energy (DE) component in the universe. However, due to some experimental evidence that the equation of state (EOS) of the DE could be evolving with time/redshift (including the possibility that it might behave phantom-like near our time) has led theorists to emphasize that there might be a dynamical field (or some suitable combination of them) that could explain the behaviour of the DE. While this is of course one possibility, here we show that there is no imperative need to invoke such dynamical fields and that a variable cosmological constant (including perhaps a variable Newton's constant too) may account, in a natural way, for all these features.