Bulk/boundary modular quintessence and DESI
A bstract The latest DESI DR2 results, when combined with other independent cosmological data on the Cosmic Microwave Background and supernovas, suggest a preference for dynamical dark energy. We propose a novel cosmological scenario, which features two distinct scalar fields. One governs the magnitude of the present-day dark energy density and is related to the size of extra-dimensions. Accounting for the observed smallness of this energy density requires the scalar to reside near the boundary of field space. The second field, responsible for the time evolution of dark energy and associated with the string coupling, must instead lie in the bulk to remain consistent with the non-observation of light string states. We show that a natural candidate for such dark energy dynamics is a quintessence modular-invariant potential, in which the second scalar field rolls down a negatively curved slope, starting from a self-dual critical point. We find that this scenario is in good agreement with the latest findings by DESI.
Authors
- Joaquin Masias (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4147-1370)
- Luis A. Anchordoqui (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1463-7136)
- Niccolò Cribiori (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4886-6586)
- Marco Scalisi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6832-6670)
- Ignatios Antoniadis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7521-3359)
- Dieter Lüst
- Arda Hasar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6436-8106)
Institutions
- The Graduate Center, CUNY (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- American Museum of Natural History (US)
- Chulalongkorn University (TH)
- Lehman College (US)
- City University of New York (US)
- Middle East Technical University (TR)
- University of Catania (IT)
- Sorbonne Université (FR)
- Max Planck Institute for Physics (DE)
- Instituto de Física Teórica (ES)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania (IT)
- Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies (FR)
- Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania (IT)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- KU Leuven (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of High Energy Physics
- Published
- 2025-09-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep09(2025)128
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.31
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Chulalongkorn University
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Università di Catania
- Vlaamse regering