On Cosmological Implications of Gravitational Trace Anomaly

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum trace anomalies influence large-scale gravity, predicting scale-dependent dark energy and dark matter densities, and aligning with observed cosmic parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking quantum trace anomalies to cosmological scale dependence of dark components, matching key observational data.

Findings

Predicts scale-dependent dark energy and dark matter densities.

Reproduces observed spectral index of primordial fluctuations.

Aligns dark energy equation of state with observations.

Abstract

We study the infrared effective theory of gravity that stems from the quantum trace anomaly. Quantum fluctuations of the metric induce running of the cosmological constant and the Newton constant at cosmological scales. By imposing the generalized Bianchi identity we obtain a prediction for the scale dependence of the dark matter and dark energy densities in terms of the parameters of the underlying conformal theory. For certain values of the model parameters the dark energy equation of state and the observed spectral index of the primordial density fluctuations can be simultaneously reproduced.