2015/12/16 by Dražen Glavan, Tomislav Prokopec, Tomo Takahashi
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Coupling (piping) #Dark energy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Inflation (cosmology) #Mathematical physics #Metric expansion of space #Physics #Quantum #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Theoretical physics #Universe #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.94.084053
published as Phys. Rev. D 94, 084053 (2016) · 66 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2015/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2016/10/28 · arxiv updated 2016/11/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the backreaction of the quantum fluctuations of a very light (m\ensuremath\lesssimHtoday) nonminimally coupled spectator scalar field on the expansion dynamics of the Universe. The one-loop expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of these fluctuations, as a measure of the backreaction, is computed throughout the expansion history from the early inflationary universe until the onset of recent acceleration today. We show that, when the nonminimal coupling \ensuremathξ to Ricci curvature is negative (\ensuremathξc=1/6 corresponding to conformal coupling), the quantum backreaction grows exponentially during inflation, such that it can grow large enough rather quickly (within a few hundred e-foldings) to survive until late time and constitute a contribution of the cosmological constant type of the right magnitude to appreciably alter the expansion dynamics. The unique feature of this model is in that, under rather generic assumptions, inflation provides a natural explanation for the initial conditions needed to explain the late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe, making it a particularly attractive model of dark energy.