Abstract
Standard cosmology poses a number of important questions. Apart from its singular origin, it possesses early and late accelerating phases required to account for observations. The vacuum energy has been considered as a possible way to resolve some of these questions. The vacuum energy density induced by free fields in an early de Sitter phase has earlier been estimated to be proportional to H 4, while more recently it has been suggested that the QCD condensate induces a term proportional to H at late times. These results have been employed in models which are non-singular and inflationary at early times and accelerating at late times. Here we cast these models in terms of scalar fields and study the corresponding spectrum of primordial perturbations. At early times the spectrum is found to be not scale-invariant, thus implying that slow-roll inflation is still required after the phase transition induced by the vacuum. At late times the corresponding scalar-field potential is harmonic, with a mass of the order of the Hubble scale, a result that may be understood in the light of the holographic conjecture.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Ford L.H.: Phys. Rev. D 11, 3370 (1975)
Dowker J.S., Critchley R.: Phys. Rev. D 13, 3224 (1976)
Davies P.C.W.: Phys. Lett. B 68, 402 (1977)
Starobinsky A.A.: Phys. Lett. B 91, 99 (1980)
Carneiro S.: Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 15, 2241 (2006)
Schutzhold R.: Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 081302 (2002)
Klinkhamer F.R., Volovik G.E.: Phys. Rev. D 79, 063527 (2009)
Dodelson S.: Modern Cosmology. Academic Press, New York (2003)
Fulling S.A., Parker L.: Phys. Rev. D 10, 3905 (1974)
Dvali, G., Turner, M.: astro-ph/0301510
Carneiro S., Dantas M.A., Pigozzo C., Alcaniz J.S.: Phys. Rev. D 77, 083504 (2008)
Borges H.A., Carneiro S., Fabris J.C., Pigozzo C.: Phys. Rev. D 77, 043513 (2008)
Mena Marugán G.A., Carneiro S.: Phys. Rev. D 65, 087303 (2002)
Tavakol R., Ellis G.F.R.: Phys. Lett. B 469, 37 (1999)
Bousso R.: Rev. Mod. Phys. 74, 825 (2002)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Second Award in the 2009 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carneiro, S., Tavakol, R. On vacuum density, the initial singularity and dark energy. Gen Relativ Gravit 41, 2287–2293 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-009-0846-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-009-0846-2