A quintessential introduction to dark energy

Most of the energy in the Universe consists of some form of dark energy that is gravitationally self-repulsive and that is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. The possible candidates are a vacuum energy density (or, equivalently, a cosmological constant) and quintessence, a time-evo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences physical, and engineering sciences, 2003-11, Vol.361 (1812), p.2497-2513
Main Author: Steinhardt, Paul J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cosmic microwave background radiation
Cosmological constant
Cosmological models
Cyclic Models
Dark Energy
Dark matter
Flux density
K -Essence
Microwave Background
Multipoles
Quintessence
String theory
Supernovae
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Most of the energy in the Universe consists of some form of dark energy that is gravitationally self-repulsive and that is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. The possible candidates are a vacuum energy density (or, equivalently, a cosmological constant) and quintessence, a time-evolving, spatially inhomogeneous component with negative pressure. In this review, we focus on quintessence and ideas on how it might solve the cosmic coincidence problem, how it might be distinguished observationally from a cosmological constant, and how it may affect the overall cosmic history of the Universe.
ISSN:1364-503X
1471-2962
DOI:10.1098/rsta.2003.1290