Quintessential Difficulties
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2014-11-17 v3 Astrophysics
Abstract
An alternative to a cosmological constant is quintessence, defined as a slowly-varying scalar field potential V(\phi). If quintessence is observationally significant, an epoch of inflation is beginning at the present epoch, with \phi the slowly-rolling inflaton field. In contrast with ordinary inflation, quintessence seems to require extreme fine tuning of the potential V(\phi). The degree of fine-tuning is quantified in various cases.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9811375,
title = {Quintessential Difficulties},
author = {Christopher Kolda and David H. Lyth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9811375},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
7 pages LaTeX. Revised to be more pedagogical; results unchanged