Related papers: Quintessence, the Gravitational Constant, and Grav…
Two sides of cosmological constant problem are discussed: a mysterious compensation of all contributions to vacuum energy with the accuracy of 100-50 orders of magnitude and a surprising equality of a constant vacuum energy density to the…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
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…
Many models of quintessence predict a time variation of the fundamental constants as well as a composition-dependent gravity like long-range force mediated by the cosmon. We present bounds for the cosmon coupling to matter and radiation…
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…
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.…
We outline a dynamical dark energy scenario whose signatures may be simultaneously tested by astronomical observations and laboratory experiments. The dark energy is a field with slightly sub-gravitational couplings to matter, a logarithmic…
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…
Increasing improvements in the independent determinations of the Hubble constant and the age of the universe now seem to indicate that we need a small non-vanishing cosmological constant to make the two independent observations consistent…
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…
We consider an effective field theory description of gravity coupled to a scalar field with volume-preserving diffeomorphism and Weyl invariances. The smallness of the cosmological constant is achieved when the potential of the scalar is…
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 propose a dynamical (quintessence) model of dark energy in the current universe with a renormalizable (Higgs-like) scalar potential. We prove the viability of our model (after fine tuning) for the certain range of the average scalar…
Nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. This conclusion -- now supported by numerous observations -- poses the greatest challenge for theoretical physics today. I discuss…
Despite its dominance in the present universe's energy budget, dark energy is the least understood component in the universe. Although there is a popular model for the dynamical dark energy, the quintessence scalar, the investigation is…
We consider a model of interacting cosmological constant/quintessence, where dark matter and dark energy behave as, respectively, two coexisting phases of a fluid, a thermally excited Bose component and a condensate, respectively. In a…
We consider a dynamical approach to the cosmological constant. There is a scalar field with a potential whose minimum occurs at a generic, but negative, value for the vacuum energy, and it has a non-standard kinetic term whose coefficient…
The discovery of accelerated cosmic expansion implies that, in addition to the attractive gravity of matter, there exists in our universe some other form of energy (dark energy or cosmological constant) producing a repulsive force. The…
Quintessence theories for cosmic acceleration imbue dark energy with a non-trivial dynamics that offers hope in distinguishing the physical origin of the component. We review quintessence models with an emphasis on this dynamics and discuss…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe points to a small positive vacuum energy density and negative vacuum pressure. A strong candidate is the cosmological constant in Einstein's equations of General Relativity. The vacuum dark energy…