Vacuum Phase Transition and Decay to Cross the Phantom Divide
Abstract
We show that the vacuum metamorphosis model with decay fits current baryon acoustic oscillation and supernova distance data and cosmic microwave background measurements significantly better than ΛCDM and nearly as well as w0waCDM with the same number of parameters. Vacuum metamorphosis with decay provides a physically motivated model of dark energy and an explanation of current cosmological data. In this scenario, non-perturbative quantum effects of a massive scalar field freeze the Ricci scalar curvature when it reaches a critical value proportional to the mass squared, inducing a phase transition in the scalar field, giving a phantom dark energy equation of state w<−1. After the phase transition, vacuum energy decays into light particles, providing a natural mechanism for the dark-energy equation of state to cross the phantom divide from w<−1 to w>−1, in agreement with current cosmological indications, without requiring an explicit coupling to matter.
Related
- Charging Across the Phantom Divide with Modified Gravity
- Observational constraints on scalar-vector-tensor dark energy with phantom-divide crossing
- Phantom-Divide Crossing in Barrow-Tsallis Holographic Dark Energy with a Scale-Dependent Barrow Exponent
- Safe Phantom Divide Crossing from Unscreened Non-Minimal Coupling to Gravity
- Vacuum Decay and Baryogenesis Associated with Primordial Black Holes at Finite Temperature
BibTeX
@misc{giare2026vacuum,
title = {{Vacuum Phase Transition and Decay to Cross the Phantom Divide}},
author = {William Giarè and Kushal Lodha and Robert R. Caldwell and Eleonora Di Valentino and Eric V. Linder},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.41077},
eprint = {2610.41077},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41077},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Vacuum Phase Transition and Decay to Cross the Phantom Divide
AU - William Giarè
AU - Kushal Lodha
AU - Robert R. Caldwell
AU - Eleonora Di Valentino
AU - Eric V. Linder
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.41077
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41077
AB - We show that the vacuum metamorphosis model with decay fits current baryon acoustic oscillation and supernova distance data and cosmic microwave background measurements significantly better than ΛCDM and nearly as well as w_0w_aCDM with the same number of parameters. Vacuum metamorphosis with decay provides a physically motivated model of dark energy and an explanation of current cosmological data. In this scenario, non-perturbative quantum effects of a massive scalar field freeze the Ricci scalar curvature when it reaches a critical value proportional to the mass squared, inducing a phase transition in the scalar field, giving a phantom dark energy equation of state w<−1. After the phase transition, vacuum energy decays into light particles, providing a natural mechanism for the dark-energy equation of state to cross the phantom divide from w<−1 to w>−1, in agreement with current cosmological indications, without requiring an explicit coupling to matter.
ER -