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Dark energy from conformal symmetry breaking

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Abstract

The breakdown of conformal symmetry in a conformally invariant scalar-tensor gravitational model is revisited in the cosmological context. Although the old scenario of conformal symmetry breaking in cosmology containing a scalar field has already been used in many earlier works, it seems that no special attention has been paid for the investigation on the possible connection between the breakdown of conformal symmetry and the existence of dark energy. In this paper, it is shown that the old scenario of conformal symmetry breaking in cosmology, if properly interpreted, not only has a potential ability to describe the origin of dark energy as a symmetry breaking effect, but also may resolve the coincidence problem.

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Notes

  1. Note that one may reconstruct the radiation dominant era in the standard cosmology (broken phase of conformal symmetry with a constant scalar field ϕ) by the following choices:

    $$ \alpha=-4,\qquad \beta=0,\qquad \gamma=\frac{1}{2}. $$
    (28)

  2. In a thorough study of conformal symmetry breaking at early universe, one may think that even if the conformal symmetry would break down in the high energy stage of inflationary epoch via quantum conformal anomalies, it could be restored in the low energy stage of radiation dominant era by some possible mechanisms to make the energy-momentum tensor classically traceless. In this regard, the radiation dominant era represents the conformal symmetry as it should be.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referee for the enlightening comments. This work has been supported by a grant/research fund number 217/D/5947 from Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University.

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  1. Department of Physics, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, 53714-161, Iran

    F. Darabi

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  1. F. Darabi
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Darabi, F. Dark energy from conformal symmetry breaking. Eur. Phys. J. C 73, 2389 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2389-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2389-7

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