{"paper":{"title":"How Much NEC Breaking Can the Universe Endure?","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["astro-ph.CO","hep-ph","hep-th"],"primary_cat":"gr-qc","authors_text":"Brayden R. Hull, Elly Moghtaderi, Ghazal Geshnizjani, Jerome Quintin","submitted_at":"2025-03-25T18:00:00Z","abstract_excerpt":"Quantum fields can notoriously violate the null energy condition (NEC). In a cosmological context, NEC violation can lead to, e.g., dark energy at late times with an equation-of-state parameter smaller than $-1$ and nonsingular bounces at early times. However, it is expected that there should still be a limit in semiclasssical gravity to how much `negative energy' can accumulate over time and in space as a result of quantum effects. In the course of formulating quantum-motivated energy conditions, the smeared null energy condition has emerged as a recent proposal. This condition conjectures th"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2503.19955","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2503.19955/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}