2007/06/30 by C. Wetterich · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2007.08.060
published as Phys.Lett.B655:201-208,2007 · new material on time varying constants, new figures, 8 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2007/08/01 · openalex publication_date 2007/09/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The time evolution of a cosmological scalar field can be stopped by an increasing mass of the neutrinos. This leads to a transition from a cosmological scaling solution with dynamical dark energy at early time to a cosmological constant dominated universe at late time. The trigger for the transition is set at the time when the neutrinos become non-relativistic. The characteristic mass scale for dark energy is thus related to the neutrino mass, the only known particle physics scale in its vicinity. This explains the ``why now problem'' for dark energy. We present a particle physics realization of this ``growing matter'' scenario. It is based on the very slowly varying mass of a superheavy scalar triplet field whose expectation value dominates the light neutrino masses.