Dark energy, the colored anti-de Sitter vacuum, and LHC phenomenology

Abstract

We study the possibility that the current accelerated expansion of the universe is driven by the vacuum energy density of a colored scalar field which is responsible for a phase transition in which the gauge SU(3)_c symmetry breaks. We show that if we are stuck in a SU(3)_c - preserving false vacuum, then SU(3)_c symmetry breaking can be accommodated without violating any experimental QCD bounds or bounds from cosmological observations. Moreover, unless there is an unnatural fine-tuning beyond the usual cosmological constant fine-tuning, the true vacuum state of the universe is anti-de Sitter. The model can likely be tested at the LHC. A possible (though not necessary) consequence of the model is the existence of fractionally charged massive hadrons. The model can be embedded in supersymmetric theories where massive colored scalar fields appear naturally.

accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

Cited by in corpus (21)

• The CosmoVerse White Paper: Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics
• Can cosmological observations uniquely determine the nature of dark energy ?
• Connecting LHC, ILC, and Quintessence
• J-PAS: forecasts on interacting dark energy from baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions
• Metastable dark energy
• Color Octet Scalar Bound States at the LHC
• Fractional dark energy
• Unparticle dark energy
• A note on interacting holographic dark energy with a Hubble-scale cutoff
• Magnetic Monopoles and Free Fractionally Charged States at Accelerators and in Cosmic Rays
• A new signature for color octet pseudoscalars at the LHC
• Electroweak phase transition in an extension of the Standard Model with scalar color octet
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the late Universe and glimpses of early Universe phase transitions à la baryogenesis
• Constraints on interacting dark energy revisited: implications for the Hubble tension
• Dark Energy and Modified Scale Covariant Theory of Gravitation
• A primer on problems and prospects of dark energy
• Effects of the cosmological expansion on the bubble nucleation rate for relativistic first-order phase transitions
• Constraints on Metastable Dark Energy Decaying into Dark Matter
• Slow-Roll Inflation in the Presence of a Dark Energy Coupling
• A universe born in a metastable false vacuum state needs not die
• Cosmological "constant" in a universe born in the metastable false vacuum state