No Arabic abstract
We study particle production and the corresponding entropy increase in the context of cosmology with dynamical vacuum. We focus on the particular form that has been called running vacuum model (RVM), which is known to furnish a successful description of the overall current observations at a competitive level with the concordance $Lambda$CDM model. It also provides an elegant global explanation of the cosmic history from a non-singular initial state in the very early universe up to our days and further into the final de Sitter era. The model has no horizon problem and provides an alternative explanation for the early inflation and its graceful exit, as well as a powerful mechanism for generating the large entropy of the current universe. The energy-momentum tensor of matter is generally non-conserved in such context owing to particle creation or annihilation. We analyze general thermodynamical aspects of particle and entropy production in the RVM. We first study the entropy of particles in the comoving volume during the early universe and late universe. Then, in order to obtain a more physical interpretation, we pay attention to the entropy contribution from the cosmological apparent horizon, its interior and its surface. On combining the inner volume entropy with the entropy on the horizon, we elucidate with detailed calculations whether the evolution of the entropy of the RVM universe satisfies the Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics. We find it is so and we prove that the essential reason for it is the existence of a positive cosmological constant.
The thermal history of a large class of running vacuum models in which the effective cosmological term is described by a truncated power series of the Hubble rate, whose dominant term is $Lambda (H) propto H^{n+2}$, is discussed in detail. Specifically, by assuming that the ultra-relativistic particles produced by the vacuum decay emerge into space-time in such a way that its energy density $rho_r propto T^{4}$, the temperature evolution law and the increasing entropy function are analytically calculated. For the whole class of vacuum models explored here we findthat the primeval value of the comoving radiation entropy density (associated to effectively massless particles) starts from zero and evolves extremely fast until reaching a maximum near the end of the vacuum decay phase, where it saturates. The late time conservation of the radiation entropy during the adiabatic FRW phase also guarantees that the whole class of running vacuum models predicts thesame correct value of the present day entropy, $S_{0} sim 10^{87-88}$ (in natural units), independently of the initial conditions. In addition, by assuming Gibbons-Hawking temperature as an initial condition, we find that the ratio between the late time and primordial vacuum energy densities is in agreement with naive estimates from quantum field theory, namely, $rho_{Lambda 0}/rho_{Lambda I} sim10^{-123}$. Such results are independent on the power $n$ and suggests that the observed Universe may evolve smoothly between two extreme, unstable, nonsingular de Sitter phases.
Theoretically, the running of the cosmological constant in the IR region is not ruled out. On the other hand, from the QFT viewpoint, the energy released due to the variation of the cosmological constant in the late universe cannot go to the matter sector. For this reason, the phenomenological bounds on such a running are not sufficiently restrictive. The situation can be different in the early universe when the gravitational field was sufficiently strong to provide an efficient creation of particles from the vacuum. We develop a framework for systematically exploring this ossibility. It is supposed that the running occurs in the epoch when the Dark Matter already decoupled and is expanding adiabatically, while baryons are approximately massless and can be abundantly created from vacuum due to the decay of vacuum energy. By using the handy model of Reduced Relativistic Gas for describing the Dark Matter, we consider the dynamics of both cosmic background and linear perturbations and evaluate the impact of the vacuum decay on the matter power spectrum and to the first CMB peak. Additionally, using the combined data of CMB+BAO+SNIa we find the best fit values for the free parameters of our model.
In this letter, we elaborate further on a Cosmological Running-Vacuum type model for the Universe, suggested previously by the authors within the context of a string-inspired effective theory in the presence of a Kalb-Ramond (KR) gravitational axion field which descends from the antisymmetric tensor of the massless gravitational string multiplet. In the presence of this field, which has anomalous CP violating interactions with the gravitons, primordial gravitational waves induce gravitational anomalies, which in turn are responsible for the appearance of $H^2$ and $H^4$ contributions to the vacuum energy density, these terms being characteristic of generic running-vacuum-model (RVM) type, where $H$ is the Hubble parameter. In this work we prove in detail the appearance of the $H^4$ terms due to gravitational-anomaly-induced condensates in the energy density of the primordial Universe, which can self-consistently induce inflation, and subsequent exit from it, according to the generic features of RVM. We also argue in favour of the robustness of our results, which were derived within an effective low-energy field theory approach, against Ultra Violet completion of the theory. During the radiation and matter-dominated eras, gravitational anomalies cancel, as required for the consistency of the quantum matter/radiation field theory. However, chiral and QCD-axion-type anomalies survive and have important consequences for both cosmic magnetogenesis and axionic dark matter in the Universe. Finally, the stringy RVM scenario presented here predicts quintessence-like dynamical dark energy for the current Universe, which is compatible with the existing fitting analyses of such model against observations
We track the evolution of entropy and black holes in a cyclic universe that undergoes repeated intervals of expansion followed by slow contraction and a smooth (non-singular) bounce. In this kind of cyclic scenario, there is no big crunch and no chaotic mixmaster behavior. We explain why the entropy following each bounce is naturally partitioned into near-maximal entropy in the matter-radiation sector and near-minimal in the gravitational sector, satisfying the Weyl curvature conditions conjectured to be essential for a cosmology consistent with observations. As a result, this kind of cyclic universe can undergo an unbounded number of cycles in the past and/or the future.
The $Lambda$-term in Einsteins equations is a fundamental building block of the `concordance $Lambda$CDM model of cosmology. Even though the model is not free of fundamental problems, they have not been circumvented by any alternative dark energy proposal either. Here we stick to the $Lambda$-term, but we contend that it can be a `running quantity in quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime. A plethora of phenomenological works have shown that this option can be highly competitive with the $Lambda$CDM with a rigid cosmological term. The, so-called, `running vacuum models (RVMs) are characterized by the vacuum energy density, $rho_{vac}$, being a series of (even) powers of the Hubble parameter and its time derivatives. Such theoretical form has been motivated by general renormalization group arguments, which look plausible. Here we dwell further upon the origin of the RVM structure within QFT in FLRW spacetime. We compute the renormalized energy-momentum tensor with the help of the adiabatic regularization procedure and find that it leads essentially to the RVM form. This means that $rho_{vac}(H)$ evolves as a constant term plus dynamical components ${cal O}(H^2)$ and ${cal O}(H^4)$, the latter being relevant for the early universe only. However, the renormalized $rho_{vac}(H)$ does not carry dangerous terms proportional to the quartic power of the masses ($sim m^4$) of the fields, these terms being a well-known source of exceedingly large contributions. At present, $rho_{vac}(H)$ is dominated by the additive constant term accompanied by a mild dynamical component $sim u H^2$ ($| u|ll1$), which mimics quintessence.