2010/07/28 by Claudio Dappiaggi, Dappiaggi, Claudio, Thomas-Paul Hack +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1007.5009
openalex publication_date 2010/07/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the backreaction of free quantum fields on a flat Robertson-Walker spacetime. Apart from renormalization freedom, the vacuum energy receives contributions from both the trace anomaly and the thermal nature of the quantum state. The former represents a dynamical realisation of dark energy, while the latter mimics an effective dark matter component. The semiclassical dynamics yield two classes of asymptotically stable solutions. The first reproduces the concordance model in a suitable regime. The second lacks a classical counterpart, but is in excellent agreement with recent observations.