Compactification, Vacuum Energy and Quintessence

TL;DR

This paper explores how vacuum energy from higher-dimensional gravity theories, after compactification, can act as quintessence, explaining the universe's accelerated expansion without conflicting with observational constraints.

Contribution

It demonstrates stable solutions in a multidimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills system that can account for dark energy through vacuum energy from compactified extra dimensions.

Findings

Stable solutions match observed acceleration

Vacuum energy remains consistent with observational bounds

No disruption to structure formation scenarios

Abstract

We study the possibility that the vacuum energy density of scalar and internal-space gauge fields arising from the process of dimensional reduction of higher dimensional gravity theories plays the role of quintessence. We show that, for the multidimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills system compactified on a $R \times S^3 \times S^d$ topology, there are classically stable solutions such that the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe at present can be accounted for without upsetting structure formation scenarios or violating observational bounds on the vacuum energy density.