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Phys. Rev. D 69, 122002 (2004) [8 pages]

Tracking quintessence would require two cosmic coincidences

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Sidney Bludman*
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany

Received 24 December 2003; published 29 June 2004

Good tracking requires that the quintessence energy fraction slowly increase while the roll λ-dlnV/ϰdφ slowly decreases, but is not yet truly slow-rolling. The supernova bound on the present quintessence equation of state requires either (1) a cosmological constant or other fine-tuned “crawling quintessence” or (2) “roll-over quintessence” that tracked until recently, but now became slow rolling, because of a sharp increase in potential curvature. Thus, fine-tuning is required by constant equation of state and inverse power potentials, but can be avoided by the supergravity and Skordis-Albrecht potentials and other good trackers, provided quintessence energy domination and slow roll both began only recently. This makes the time in which we live special in two respects.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.69.122002
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.69.122002
PACS:
98.80.Es, 98.80.Cq, 95.35.+d, 98.80.Jk

*Also at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Email address: bludman@mail.desy.de