Pith. sign in

REVIEW 6 cited by

Kick it like DESI: PNGB quintessence with a dynamically generated initial velocity

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2412.07418 v2 pith:UTEVRRWE submitted 2024-12-10 astro-ph.CO hep-phhep-th

classification astro-ph.COhep-phhep-th
keywords quintessenceaxioninitialvelocitythetawillbackgroundcouplings
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

Motivated by the hint for time-dependent dynamical dark energy from an analysis of the DESI Baryon Accoustic Oscillation (BAO) data together with information from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Supernovae (SN), we relax the assumption of a vanishing initial velocity for a quintessence field. In particular we focus on pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone-Boson (PNGB) quintessence in the form of an axion like particle, that can arise as the phase of a complex scalar and could possess derivative couplings to fermions or topological couplings to abelian gauge fields, without upsetting the necessary flatness of its potential. We discuss mechanisms from the aforementioned interactions for sourcing an initial axion field velocity $\dot{\theta_i}$ at redshifts $3\leq z\leq 10$, that will "kick" it into motion. Driven by this initial velocity the axion will first roll up in its potential, similar to "freezing" dark energy. After it has reached the pinnacle of its trajectory, it will start to roll down, and behave as "thawing" quintessence. As a proof of concept we undertake a combined fit to BAO, SN and CMB data at the background level. We find that a scenario with $\dot{\theta_i}=\mathcal{O}(1) \; m_a$, where $m_a$ is the axion mass, is slightly preferred over both $\Lambda$CDM and the conventional "thawing" quintessence with $\dot{\theta_i}=0$. The best fit points for this case exhibit transplanckian decay constants and very flat potentials, which both are in tension with conjectures from string theory.

Discussion (0). Sign in to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Collider Probes of Dark Energy Microphysics

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.5 of 10

    Derivative couplings of a k-essence dark-energy scalar to a 2HDM+a pseudoscalar make the mediator’s invisible width and kinematics depend on the dark-energy sound speed c_s².

  2. Simple quintessence models in light of DESI-BAO observations

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Thawing quintessence with linear or quadratic potentials is favored over LambdaCDM only when the DESY5 supernova catalog is used; with Pantheon+ or Union3 the preference is mild.

  3. Examining Quintessence Models with DESI Data

    astro-ph.CO 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    NEC-obeying hilltop and exponential quintessence models give at most marginal improvement over the cosmological constant against DESI 2024 data, and the prominent k=10 hilltop 'excellent mimic' claim is an artifact of...

  4. Cosmology of axion dark energy in supersymmetric models and constraints on high scale parameters

    astro-ph.CO 2025-11 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A two-cosine axion dark energy potential fits CMB+BAO+supernova data better than the standard one-cosine potential, while preferring a sub-Planckian decay constant and a feeble dark-matter coupling.

  5. About electroweak domain walls in Majoron models

    hep-ph 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Electroweak instantons alone do not produce Majoron domain walls; a tiny instanton mass from B+L breaking is cosmologically negligible and can act as a bias or dark energy.

  6. Observational constraints on early time non-phantom behaviour of dynamical dark energy

    astro-ph.CO 2025-12 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Early scaling dark energy is constrained to be less than about one percent at matter-radiation equality and is disfavored by model selection, while late-time CPL dynamics show only a weak preference away from ΛCDM.

Pith tools