Related papers: The Swampland, Quintessence and the Vacuum Energy
It has recently been argued that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua. This would imply that the current accelerated expansion of the universe is not driven by a cosmological constant (or vacuum energy) but by other means such as a…
The string theory swampland proposes that there is no UV-completion for an effective field theory with an exact (metastable) de Sitter vacua, thereby ruling out standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology if the conjecture is taken seriously. The…
De Sitter solutions have been recently conjectured to be incompatible with quantum gravity. In this paper we critically assess the progress and challenges of different mechanisms to obtain de Sitter vacua in string compactifications and…
In this Letter, we study the implications of string Swampland criteria for dark energy in view of ongoing and future cosmological observations. If string theory should be the ultimate quantum gravity theory, there is evidence that exact de…
We study late-time acceleration scenarios using a quintessence field initially trapped in a metastable false vacuum state. The false vacuum has non-zero vacuum energy and could drive exponential expansion if not coupled with gravity. Upon…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
The persistent challenge of creating stable de Sitter vacua within string theory undermines the observational validity of the $\Lambda$ cold dark matter (CDM) model. This difficulty suggests that the concordance model of cosmology,…
Recently a swampland criterion has been proposed that rules out de Sitter vacua in string theory. Such a criterion should hold at all points in the field space and especially at points where the system is on-shell. However there has not…
We consider quintessence models within 4D effective descriptions of gravity coupled to two scalar fields. These theories are known to give rise to viable models of late-time cosmic acceleration without any need for flat potentials, and so…
Single-field models of accelerated expansion with nearly flat potentials, despite being able to provide observationally viable explanations for the early-time cosmic inflation and the late-time cosmic acceleration, are in strong tension…
We provide a detailed discussion of the main theoretical and phenomenological challenges of quintessence model building in any numerically controlled regime of the moduli space of string theory. We argue that a working quintessence model…
We analyse theories that do not have a de Sitter vacuum and cannot lead to slow-roll quintessence, but which nevertheless support a transient era of accelerated cosmological expansion due to interactions between a scalar $\phi$ and either a…
We revisit the phenomenology of quintessence models in light of the recently refined version of the de Sitter Swampland conjecture, which includes the possibility of unstable de Sitter critical points. We show that models of quintessence…
Although quintessence cosmologies seem to explain the amount of cosmological constant today, the required conditions are severe. For example, an extremely slowly varying and light scalar field that rolls toward the vanishing vacuum energy…
Dark energy, the main constituent in our expanding universe, responsible for its acceleration, is currently being observed with unprecedented precision through various experiments. While several cosmological models can fit this latest data,…
Swampland conjectures (SCs) of string theory require that a constant cosmological constant $\Lambda$ be replaced by a time-dependent scalar-field quintessence with constrained parameters. The constraints limit the duration of the present…
Our current best guess for a unified theory of gravitation and quantum field theory (string theory) generically predicts a set of requirements for a consistently quantized theory, the Swampland criteria. Refined versions of these criteria…
We argue that, for generic string compactifications, dark energy is likely to signal the beginning of the end of our universe, perhaps even through decompactification, with possible implications for the cosmological coincidence problem.…
We explore the possibility that our universe's current accelerated expansion is explained by a quintessence model with an exponential scalar potential, $V =V_0\, e^{-\lambda\, \phi}$, keeping an eye towards $\lambda \geq \sqrt{2}$ and an…
Motivated by the swampland conjectures, we study cosmological signatures of a quintessence potential which induces time variation in the low energy effective field theory. After deriving the evolution of the quintessence field, we…