Related papers: Tracking Quintessence Would Require Two Cosmic Coi…
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…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
A common property of popular models of quintessence dark energy is the convergence to a common solution from a large range of the initial conditions. We re-examine the popular inverse power-law model of quintessence (where the common…
We present a simple mechanism which can mimic dark energy with an equation of state w < -1 as deduced from the supernova data. We imagine that the universe is accelerating under the control of a quintessence field, which is moving up a very…
Recent observations indicate that the universe's expansion has been accelerating of late. But recent theoretical work has highlighted the difficulty of squaring acceleration with the underlying assumptions of string theory, disfavoring most…
Many ambitious experiments have been proposed to constrain dark energy and detect its evolution. At present, observational constraints are consistent with a cosmological constant and there is no firm evidence for any evolution in the dark…
One of the most compelling goals of observational cosmology is the characterisation of the properties of the dark energy component thought to be responsible for the recent acceleration of the universe, including its possible dynamics. In…
Quintessence is often invoked to explain the universe acceleration suggested by the type Ia supernovae observations. The aim of this letter is to study the validity of using a constant equation of state for quintessence models. We shall…
We report a significant finding in Quintessence theory that the the scalar fields with tracker potentials have a model-independent scaling behaviour in the expanding universe. So far widely discussed exponential,power law or hyperbolic…
We use recent astrophysical and local tests of the stability of the fine-structure constant, $\alpha$, to constrain a particular phenomenological but physically motivated class of models in which the dark energy equation of state can…
We investigate a link between the running of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ and a time evolving scalar dark energy field. Employing a versatile parameterization for the equation of state, we exhaustively cover the space of dark energy…
There is some evidence that the Universe is presently undergoing accelerating expansion. This has restored some credit to the scenarios with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. From the point of view of a theory of fundamental…
As shown by Parker and Raval, quantum field theory in curved spacetime gives a possible mechanism for explaining the observed recent acceleration of the universe. This mechanism, which differs in its dynamics from quintessence models,…
We propose a new scenario for the onset of positive acceleration of our Universe based on symmetry breaking in coupled dark energy scalar field model. In a symmetry breaking process where the scalar field rolls down its own potential, the…
We introduce a natural model of quintessence in string theory where the light rolling scalar is radiatively stable and couples to Standard Model matter with weaker-than- Planckian strength. The model is embedded in an anisotropic type IIB…
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…
We explore the prospects for using future supernova observations to probe the dark energy. We focus on quintessence, an evolving scalar field that has been suggested as a candidate for the dark energy. After simulating the observations that…
A particular kind of quintessence is considered, with equation of motion $p_Q/\rho_Q = -1$, corresponding to a cosmological term with time-dependence $\Lambda(t) = \Lambda(t_0) (R(t_0)/R(t))^{P}$ which we examine initially for $0 \leq P <…
There is marginal evidence that the quintessential form of matter responsible for the acceleration of the universe observed today has ratio between pressure and energy density $w<-1$. Such a regime, called superacceleration, cannot be…
Dark energy can be investigated in two complementary ways, by considering either general parameterizations or physically well-defined models. Following the second route, we explore the constraints on quintessence models where the…