Vacuum driven accelerated expansion

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to estimate quantum vacuum energy's gravitational effects, using gauge transformations within the effective action formalism to explain accelerated cosmic expansion.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge transformation approach to extract the gravitationally relevant quantum vacuum energy component, providing a new perspective on dark energy modeling.

Findings

Improved estimation aligns with observational data.

Method demonstrates the gravitational influence of quantum vacuum energy.

Framework applicable within Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology.

Abstract

It has been shown that an improved estimation of quantum vacuum energy can yield not only acceptable but also experimentally sensible results. The very idea consists in a straightforward extraction of gravitationally interacting part of the full quantum vacuum energy by means of gauge transformations. The implementation of the idea has been performed in the formalism of effective action, in the language of Schwinger's proper time and the Seeley-DeWitt heat kernel expansion, in the background of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker geometry.