Late time cosmic acceleration from natural infrared cutoff?

TL;DR

This paper proposes an infrared-modified cosmological model inspired by loop quantum cosmology, explaining late-time cosmic acceleration with a dynamical dark energy that leads to a big rip, matching observational viability.

Contribution

It introduces a novel infrared correction to the Friedmann equations, providing a dynamical dark energy model that explains late-time acceleration and predicts a big rip singularity.

Findings

Infrared effects cause the effective equation of state to evolve from 0 to -2.

The universe transitions from quintessence to phantom phase.

The model is observationally viable and predicts a future big rip.

Abstract

In this paper, inspired by the ultraviolet deformation of the Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker geometry in loop quantum cosmology, we formulate an infrared-modified cosmological model. We obtain the associated deformed Friedmann and Raychaudhuri equations and we show that the late time cosmic acceleration can be addressed by the infrared corrections. As a particular example, we applied the setup to the case of matter dominated universe. This model has the same number of parameters as $\Lambda$CDM, but a dynamical dark energy generates in the matter dominated era at the late time. According to our model, as the universe expands, the energy density of the cold dark matter dilutes and when the Hubble parameter approaches to its minimum, the infrared effects dominate such that the effective equation of state parameter smoothly changes from $w_{_{\rm eff}}=0$ to $w_{_{\rm eff}}=-2$. Interestingly and nontrivially, the unstable de Sitter phase with $w_{_{\rm eff}}=-1$ is corresponding to $\Omega_m=\Omega_d =0.5$ and the universe crosses the phantom divide from the quintessence phase with $w_{_{\rm eff}}>-1$ and $\Omega_m> \Omega_d$ to the phantom phase with $w_{_{\rm eff}}<-1$ and $ \Omega_m<\Omega_d$ which shows that the model is observationally viable. The results show that the universe finally ends up in a big rip singularity for a finite time proportional to the inverse of the minimum of the Hubble parameter. Moreover, we consider the dynamical stability of the model and we show that the universe starts from the matter dominated era at the past attractor with $w_{_{\rm eff}}=0$ and ends up in a future attractor at the big rip with $w_{_{\rm eff}}=-2$.