Phenomenology of a realistic accelerating universe using only Planck-scale physics

Abstract

Modern data is showing increasing evidence that the Universe is accelerating. So far, all attempts to account for the acceleration have required some fundamental dimensionless quantities to be extremely small. We show how a class of scalar field models (which may emerge naturally from superstring theory) can account for acceleration which starts in the present epoch with all the potential parameters O(1) in Planck units.

4 pages including 4 figures. Final version accepted for publication in PRL with expanded discussion of the relationship to other quintessence research. No changes to our own work