Related papers: Quintessence and the Rest of the World
An extremely light ($m_{\phi} \ll 10^{-33} {\rm eV}$), slowly-varying scalar field $\phi $ (quintessence) with a potential energy density as large as 60% of the critical density has been proposed as the origin of the accelerated expansion…
At present we know nothing about the nature of the dark energy accounting for about 70% of the energy density of the Universe. One possibility is that the dark energy is provided by an extremely light field, the quintessence, rolling down…
A new component of the cosmic medium, a light scalar field or ''quintessence '', has been proposed recently to explain cosmic acceleration with a dynamical cosmological constant. Such a field is expected to be coupled explicitely to…
Recent observations suggest that a large fraction of the energy density of the universe has negative pressure. One explanation is vacuum energy density; another is quintessence in the form of a scalar field slowly evolving down a potential.…
A substantial fraction of the energy density of the universe may consist of quintessence in the form of a slowly-rolling scalar field. Since the energy density of the scalar field generally decreases more slowly than the matter energy…
Scalar fields coupled to gravity via $\xi R {\Phi}^2$ in arbitrary Friedmann-Robertson-Walker backgrounds can be represented by an effective flat space field theory. We derive an expression for the scalar energy density where the effective…
The role that the auxiliary scalar field $\phi$ played in Brans-Dicke cosmology is discussed. If a constant vacuum energy is assumed to be the origin of dark energy, then the corresponding density parameter would be a quantity varying with…
The cosmological evolution of a quintessence-like scalar field, phi, coupled to matter and gauge fields leads to effective modifications of the coupling constants and particle masses over time. We analyze a class of models where the scalar…
Dynamical vacuum energy or quintessence, a slowly varying and spatially inhomogeneous component of the energy density with negative pressure, is currently consistent with the observational data. One potential difficulty with the idea of…
Models where the accelerated expansion of our Universe is caused by a quintessence scalar field are reviewed. In the framework of high energy physics, the physical nature of this field is discussed and its interaction with ordinary matter…
We study Quintessence cosmologies in the context of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, where a scalar field $\phi$, assumed to provide most of the cosmic energy density today, is non-minimally coupled to the Ricci curvature scalar $R$. Such…
A weakly coupled scalar field $\Phi$ with a simple exponential potential $V=M_P^4\exp(-\lambda\Phi/M_P)$ where $M_P$ is the reduced Planck mass, and $\lambda > 2$, has an attractor solution in a radiation or matter dominated universe in…
We investigate the possibility of replacing the cosmological constant with gradual condensation of a scalar field produced during the decay of a superheavy dark matter. The advantage of this class of models to the ordinary quintessence is…
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 discuss the phenomenological model in which the potential energy of the quintessence field depends linearly on the energy density of the spatial curvature. We find that the pressure of the scalar field takes a different form when the…
We investigate a class of models for dark matter and/or negative-pressure, dynamical dark energy consisting of ``spintessence,'' a complex scalar field $\phi$ spinning in a U(1)-symmetric potential $V(\phi)=V(|\phi|)$. As the Universe…
A complex scalar field has recently been suggested to bind galaxies and flatten the rotation curves of spirals. Its cosmological behavior is thoroughly investigated here. Such a field is shown to be a potential candidate for the…
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…
A cosmic scalar field evolving very slowly in time can account for the observed dark energy of the Universe. Unlike a cosmological constant, an evolving scalar field also has local spatial gradients due to gravity. If the scalar field has a…
Recently it has been proposed that the main contributor to the dark energy of the Universe is a dynamical, slow evolving, spatially inhomogeneous scalar field called quintessence. We investigate the behavior of this scalar field at galactic…