Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Dark Energy in the Dark Ages

Abstract

Non-negligible dark energy density at high redshifts would indicate dark energy physics distinct from a cosmological constant or "reasonable'" canonical scalar fields. Such dark energy can be constrained tightly through investigation of the growth of structure, with limits of > 1 for many models. Intermediate dark energy can have effects distinct from its energy density; the dark ages acceleration can be constrained to last less than 5percent of a Hubble e-fold time, exacerbating the coincidence problem. Both the total linear growth, or equivalently sigma 8, and the shape and evolution of the nonlinear mass power spectrum for z<2 (using the Linder-White nonlinear mapping prescription) provide important windows. Probes of growth, such as weak gravitational lensing, can interact with supernovae and CMB distance measurements to scan dark energy behavior over the entire range z=0-1100.

Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Current View