Early dark energy from zero-point quantum fluctuations

Dark energy from primordial inflationary quantum fluctuations.

We show that current cosmic acceleration can be explained by an almost massless scalar field experiencing quantum fluctuations during primordial inflation. Provided its mass does not exceed the Hubble parameter today, this field has been frozen during the cosmological ages to start dominating the Universe only recently. By using supernovae data, completed with baryonic acoustic oscillations fro...

Dark Energy From Vacuum Fluctuations

The nature of the dark energy (DE) is one of the most outstanding problems of physical sciences today. Numerous and often ingenious attempts have been made to explain it, with multiple new papers appearing daily, yet no model proposed so far has gained a general acceptance. Modern approaches to the problem date from the pioneering papers by Zel’dovich [1], who was first to recognize the fundame...

Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations, Zero Point Energy and the Question of Observable Noise

Reducing zero-point systematics in dark energy supernova experiments

We study the effect of filter zero-point uncertainties on future supernova dark energy missions. Fitting for calibration parameters using simultaneous analysis of all Type Ia supernova standard candles achieves a significant improvement over more traditional fit methods. This conclusion is robust under diverse experimental configurations (number of observed supernovae, maximum survey redshift, ...

Dark energy as spacetime curvature induced by quantum vacuum fluctuations

Assuming that the vacuum expectation of the quantum vacuum energy-momentum is zero, I show that fluctuations give rise to a smooth curvature of spacetime. That curvature is currently attributed to a uniform energy-momentum tensor, known as “dark energy”.Our calculation leads to an estimate which roughly agrees with observations. An outstanding open problem in cosmology concerns the nature of “d...