Curvature Perturbations and Anomaly explain Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper explores a model where dark energy originates from residual cosmological constant and decays rapidly via QCD and QED trace anomalies during reheating, aligning with observations and explaining its current small value.

Contribution

It proposes a novel decay mechanism for dark energy involving trace anomalies and links it to reheating, curvature perturbations, and lepto-genesis, offering a new perspective on dark energy evolution.

Findings

Dark energy decay is driven by gluon pair production via QCD trace anomaly.

The reheating temperature is estimated as ~10^6 GeV based on decay width and Planck mass.

The current dark energy density is explained by suppression factors involving fine structure constant and curvature perturbations.

Abstract

We investigate the history of dark energy to explain the present magnitude. We assume the dark energy is the residual cosmological constant. The most important channel in the reheating process is the gluon pair productions by QCD trace anomaly. We argue dark energy decays rapidly by gluon pair emissions during the reheating and after the big bang. The reheating temperature is determined by the decay width of dark energy Gamma and the Planck mass M_p as sqrt{M_P Gamma} ~ 10^6GeV. It is the consequence of Friedmann's equation and an equilibrium condition Gamma~ H. As the Universe cools below the hadronic scale, dark energy density is almost frozen. Nevertheless the dark energy further decreases by emitting two photons. We have estimated the current decay rate of dark energy from the QED trace anomaly. The consistent solution of Friedmann equation is in an excellent agreement with the observations. The suppression factor of dark energy scale is the product of fine structure constant alpha and curvature perturbation P as 10^{-30}=(\alpha^2P/4\pi)^2. We argue the conformal symmetry breaking in the both UV and IR are necessary unless dark energy is subtracted. We also investigated lepto-genesis by adding massive right handed neutrinos. The realistic lepto-genesis takes place during reheating process.