Related papers: Tracking Quintessence Would Require Two Cosmic Coi…
With the tracking condition, the stability of quintessence solutions are examined. It is found that there is only one physically relevant fixed point for the system generically. Two specific examples of quintessence potentials are worked…
We point out that quintessence with an exponential potential V_0 exp(- beta phi / 3^{1/2} M_p) can account for the present observed acceleration of the universe, without necessarily leading to eternal acceleration. This occurs for 2.4 <…
We study the cosmological role of a Tracking Field $\phi$ in Extended Quintessence scenarios (TEQ), where the dynamical vacuum energy driving the acceleration of the universe today is coupled with the Ricci scalar, $R$, with a term of the…
We analyse the constraints that can be placed on a cosmological constant or quintessence-like component by combining observations of Type Ia supernovae with measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. We use the recent…
We introduce a new proposal for the onset of cosmic acceleration based on mass-varying neutrinos. When massive neutrinos become nonrelativistic, the $Z_2$ symmetry breaks, and the quintessence potential becomes positive from its initially…
Recently, the observed equation of state for dark energy appears to favor values below $-1$. The tendency implies that the nature of dark energy may be quite different from that of the cosmological constant. In view of the adjustment on the…
We show that in the simplest theories of spontaneous symmetry breaking one can have a stage of a fast-roll inflation. In this regime the standard slow-roll condition |m^2| << H^2 is violated. Nevertheless, this stage can be rather long if…
We show that the Supernovae results, implying evidence for an accelerating Universe, may be closely related to the recent discovery of redshift dependence in the fine structure constant $\alpha$. The link is a class of varying speed of…
Scalar fields aptly describe equation of state of dark energy. The scalar field models were initially proposed to circumvent the fine tuning problem of cosmological constant. However, the model parameters also need a fine tuning of their…
Crossover quintessence predicts that the time variation of fundamental couplings is substantially faster at redshift $z\approx 2$ than over the past few billion years. This could reconcile the reported time variation of the fine structure…
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…
We examine a quintessence model with a modified exponential potential given by $V(\phi) = V_0(1+e^{-\lambda \phi})$. Unlike quintessence with a standard exponential potential, our model can yield an acceptable accelerated expansion at late…
It is shown that if a small negative cosmological constant is added to quintessence models with equation of state $p=\omega\rho$ on the range $-1 <\omega < -1/3$, the resulting scenarios could not contain any future event horizons.…
The framework for considering the astronomical and cosmological observations in the context of scalar-tensor quintessence in which the quintessence field also accounts for a time dependence of the gravitational constant is developed. The…
We investigate two simplified non-singular cyclic models with a negative time-varying cosmological constant to represent the non-conventional mechanism of negative cosmological constant expected to address the late-time cosmic acceleration.…
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua, and that quintessence explains the current epoch of accelerated cosmic expansion. A proposed, key prediction of this scenario is time-varying couplings in…
The results from the Supernova Cosmology Project indicate a relation between cosmic distance and redshift that corresponds to an accelerating Universe, and, as a consequence, the presence of an energy component with negative pressure. This…
We discuss the general dynamical behaviors of quintessence field, in particular, the general conditions for tracking and thawing solutions are discussed. We explain what the tracking solutions mean and in what sense the results depend on…
We examine the status of various dark energy-models in light of the recently observed SN 1997ff at z \approx 1.7. The modified data still fit a pure cosmological constant \Lambda or a quintessence with an equation of state similar to that…
We study the dynamical properties of tracker quintessence models using a general parametrization of their corresponding potentials, and show that there is a general condition for the appearance of a tracker behavior at early times.…