Dark Energy Without a Cosmological Constant: Structural Algebraic Emergence of w=−1 from a Discrete Spatial Quantum Network

Dark Energy Without a Cosmological Constant: Structural Algebraic Emergence of w=-1 from a Discrete Spatial Quantum Network The nature of dark energy and the cosmological constant problem represent the most profound crises in modern physics. Existing standard cosmological models (CDM) and various dynamical dark energy models require the artificial introduction of a cosmological constant or rely on the "slow-roll" approximation of scalar fields, inevitably facing severe fine-tuning dilemmas. This paper proposes a novel ontological framework: space is not a pre-existing background, but is continuously generated by a discrete spatial quantum network in its ground state (free state). Because both the macroscopic effective volume and the total ground-state energy of the network are strictly proportional to the number of free-state quanta, this quantum number is algebraically canceled out when calculating the energy density. Consequently, without any dynamical assumptions, the exact constancy of the dark energy equation of state, w=-1 is rigorously proven. Substituting this inherent structural mechanism into the standard Friedmann equations naturally yields a cosmic transition from deceleration to acceleration at a redshift of z=0.631, which is consistent with current joint observations from Type Ia supernovae and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO).