Dark Energy as the Remnant of Inflation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a QED-based symmetry breaking mechanism that explains the origin of vacuum energy, linking inflation and dark energy as effects of high-frequency virtual vacuum currents generating an effective electromagnetic field.

Contribution

It introduces a novel QED-inspired model where vacuum currents produce an effective field accounting for inflation and dark energy, with minimal parameters fitting observational data.

Findings

The model reproduces observed vacuum energy densities.

It links inflation and dark energy through a common mechanism.

Effective vacuum fields become relevant at energies around 10^5 TeV.

Abstract

A QED-based symmetry breaking/bootstrap mechanism, appearing at sufficiently small space-time distances, is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on, to the present day, to provide the "Dark Energy" which is apparently forcing our Universe apart. Very high frequency virtual vacuum currents are assumed to generate weak, effective electromagnetic fields, corresponding to the appearance of an effective 4-potential A_vac (x), which is itself equal to the vacuum expectation value of the operator A(x) in the presence of that A_vac (x). Lorentz invariance is manifest, as every observer would measure the same electric field in his or her own reference frame. Such an effective vacuum field would have no relevance to the motion of ordinary charged particules until particle energies on the order of 10^5 TeV are possible. The model is sufficiently constrained so that one parameter is needed to fit the vacuum energy densities and relevant times for the onset and end of Inflation, as well as those parameters of present day Dark Energy.