# Quintessence (physics)

For other forms of quintessence, see Quintessence (disambiguation). For theories and defunct or classical concepts named after the synonym "Aether", see Aether (disambiguation).

In physics, quintessence is a hypothetical form of dark energy, more precisely a scalar field, postulated as an explanation of the observation of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe, rather than due to a true cosmological constant. The first example of this scenario was proposed by Ratra and Peebles (1988).[1] The concept was expanded to more general types of time-varying dark energy and the term "quintessence" was first introduced in a paper by R.R.Caldwell, Rahul Dave and Paul Steinhardt.[2] It has been proposed by some physicists to be a fifth fundamental force[citation needed]. Quintessence differs from the cosmological constant explanation of dark energy in that it is dynamic, that is, it changes over time, unlike the cosmological constant which always stays constant. It is suggested that quintessence can be either attractive or repulsive depending on the ratio of its kinetic and potential energy. Those working with this postulate believe that quintessence became repulsive about ten billion years ago, about 3.5 billion years after the Big Bang.[3]

## Scalar field

Quintessence is a scalar field with an equation of state where wq, the ratio of pressure pq and density ${\displaystyle \rho }$q, is given by the potential energy ${\displaystyle V(Q)}$ and a kinetic term:

${\displaystyle w_{q}=p_{q}/\rho _{q}={\frac {{\frac {1}{2}}{\dot {Q}}^{2}-V(Q)}{{\frac {1}{2}}{\dot {Q}}^{2}+V(Q)}}}$

Hence, quintessence is dynamic, and generally has a density and wq parameter that varies with time. By contrast, a cosmological constant is static, with a fixed energy density and wq = −1.

## Tracker behavior

Many models of quintessence have a tracker behavior, which according to Ratra and Peebles (1988) and Paul Steinhardt et al. (1999) partly solves the cosmological constant problem.[4] In these models, the quintessence field has a density which closely tracks (but is less than) the radiation density until matter-radiation equality, which triggers quintessence to start having characteristics similar to dark energy, eventually dominating the universe. This naturally sets the low scale of the dark energy.[5] When comparing the predicted expansion rate of the universe as given by the tracker solutions with cosmological data, a main feature of tracker solutions is that one needs four parameters to properly describe the behavior of their equation of state,[6][7] whereas it has been shown that at most a two-parameter model can optimally be constrained by mid-term future data (horizon 2015-2020).[8]

## Specific models

Some special cases of quintessence are phantom energy, in which wq < −1,[9] and k-essence (short for kinetic quintessence), which has a non-standard form of kinetic energy. If this type of energy were to exist, it would cause a big rip[10] in the universe due to the growing energy density of dark energy which would cause the expansion of the universe to increase at a faster-than-exponential rate.

### Holographic Dark Energy

Holographic Dark Energy models compared to Cosmological Constant models, imply a high degeneracy[clarification needed].[11] It has been suggested that dark energy might originate from quantum fluctuations of spacetime, and are limited by the event horizon of the universe.[12]

Studies with quintessence dark energy found that it dominates gravitational collapse in a spacetime simulation, based on the holographic thermalization. These results show that the smaller the state parameter of quintessence is, the harder it is for the plasma to thermalize.[13]

## Quintom scenario

In 2004, when scientists fitted the evolution of dark energy with the cosmological data, they found that the equation of state had possibly crossed the cosmological constant boundary (w = –1) from above to below. A proven no-go theorem indicates this situation, called the Quintom scenario, requires at least two degrees of freedom for dark energy models.[14]

## Terminology

The name comes from the classical elements in ancient Greece. The aether, a pure "fifth element" (quinta essentia in Latin), was thought to fill the universe beyond Earth. Similarly, modern quintessence would be the fifth known contribution to the overall mass-energy content of the universe. (The other four in the modern interpretation, different from the ancient ideas, are: baryonic matter; radiation – photons and the highly relativistic neutrinos, which may be considered hot dark matter; cold dark matter; and the term due to spatial curvature – loosely, gravitational self-energy.)

## References

1. ^ Ratra, P.; Peebles, L. (1988). "Cosmological consequences of a rolling homogeneous scalar field". Physical Review D. 37 (12): 3406. Bibcode:1988PhRvD..37.3406R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.37.3406.
2. ^ Caldwell, R.R.; Dave, R.; Steinhardt, P.J. (1998). "Cosmological Imprint of an Energy Component with General Equation-of-State". Phys.Rev.Lett. 80 (8): 1582–1585. arXiv:astro-ph/9708069. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..80.1582C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1582.
3. ^ Christopher Wanjek; "Quintessence, accelerating the Universe?"; http://www.astronomytoday.com/cosmology/quintessence.html
4. ^ Zlatev, I.; Wang, L.; Steinhardt, P. (1999). "Quintessence, Cosmic Coincidence, and the Cosmological Constant". Physical Review Letters. 82 (5): 896–899. arXiv:astro-ph/9807002. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..82..896Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.896.
5. ^ Steinhardt, P.; Wang, L.; Zlatev, I. (1999). "Cosmological tracking solutions". Physical Review D. 59 (12): 123504. arXiv:astro-ph/9812313. Bibcode:1999PhRvD..59l3504S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.59.123504.
6. ^ Linden, Sebastian; Virey, Jean-Marc (2008). "Test of the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrization for rapid dark energy equation of state transitions". Physical Review D. 78 (2): 023526. arXiv:0804.0389. Bibcode:2008PhRvD..78b3526L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.023526.
7. ^ Ferramacho, L.; Blanchard, A.; Zolnierowsky, Y.; Riazuelo, A. (2010). "Constraints on dark energy evolution". A&A. 514: A20. arXiv:0909.1703. Bibcode:2010A&A...514A..20F. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200913271.
8. ^ Linder, Eric V.; Huterer, Dragan (2005). "How many cosmological parameters". Physical Review D. 72 (4): 043509. arXiv:astro-ph/0505330. Bibcode:2005PhRvD..72d3509L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.72.043509.
9. ^ Caldwell, R. R. (2002). "A phantom menace? Cosmological consequences of a dark energy component with super-negative equation of state". Physics Letters B. 545 (1-2): 23–29. arXiv:astro-ph/9908168. Bibcode:2002PhLB..545...23C. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(02)02589-3.
10. ^ Antoniou, Ioannis and Perivolaropoulos, Leandros (2016). "Geodesics of McVittie Spacetime with a Phantom Cosmological Background". Phys. Rev. D93 (12). arXiv:1603.02569. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.123520.
11. ^ Yazhou Hu, Miao Li, Nan Li, Zhenhui Zhang (2015). "Holographic Dark Energy with Cosmological Constant". arXiv:1502.01156.
12. ^ Shan Gao (2013). "Explaining Holographic Dark Energy". Bibcode:2013Galax...1..180G. doi:10.3390/galaxies1030180.
13. ^ Xiao-Xiong Zeng, De-You Chen, Li-Fang Li (2014). "Holographic thermalization and gravitational collapse in the spacetime dominated by quintessence dark energy". arXiv:1408.6632. Bibcode:2015PhRvD..91d6005Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.91.046005.
14. ^ Hu, Wayne (2005). "Crossing the phantom divide: Dark energy internal degrees of freedom". Physical Review D. 71 (4): 047301. arXiv:astro-ph/0410680. Bibcode:2005PhRvD..71d7301H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.71.047301.