English

Quintessence and the cosmological constant

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

Quintessence -- the energy density of a slowly evolving scalar field -- may constitute a dynamical form of the homogeneous dark energy in the universe. We review the basic idea in the light of the cosmological constant problem. Cosmological observations or a time variation of fundamental `constants' can distinguish quintessence from a cosmological constant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0205267,
  title  = {Quintessence and the cosmological constant},
  author = {Michael Doran and Christof Wetterich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0205267},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures, contribution to Dark Matter 2002