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Quintessence: a review. (English) Zbl 1277.83012

Summary: Quintessence is a canonical scalar field introduced to explain the late-time cosmic acceleration. The cosmological dynamics of quintessence is reviewed, paying particular attention to the evolution of the dark energy equation of state \(w\). For the field potentials having tracking and thawing properties, the evolution of \(w\) can be known analytically in terms of a few model parameters. Using the analytic expression of \(w\), we constrain quintessence models from the observations of supernovae type Ia, cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillations. The tracking freezing models are hardly distinguishable from the \(\Lambda\)-cold-dark-matter model, whereas in thawing models the today’s field equation of state is constrained to be \(w_0 < -0.7\) (\(95\%\) CL). We also derive an analytic formula for the growth rate of matter density perturbations in dynamical dark energy models, which allows a possibility of putting further bounds on \(w\) from the measurement of redshift-space distortions in the galaxy power spectrum. Finally, we review particle physics models of quintessence-such as those motivated by supersymmetric theories. The field potentials of thawing models based on a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson or extended supergravity theories have a nice property that a tiny mass of quintessence can be protected against radiative corrections.

MSC:

83-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to relativity and gravitational theory
85A40 Astrophysical cosmology
83F05 Relativistic cosmology
83C55 Macroscopic interaction of the gravitational field with matter (hydrodynamics, etc.)
81T20 Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds
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