Expansion history with decaying vacuum: A complete cosmological scenario

Abstract

We propose a novel cosmological scenario with the space-time emerging from a pure initial de Sitter stage and subsequently evolving into the radiation, matter and dark energy dominated epochs, thereby avoiding the initial singularity and providing a complete description of the expansion history and a natural solution to the horizon problem. The model is based on a dynamical vacuum energy density which evolves as a power series of the Hubble rate. The transit from the inflation into the standard radiation epoch is universal, giving a clue for a successful description of the graceful exit. Since the resulting late time cosmic history is very close to the concordance Λcold dark matter model, the new unified framework embodies a more complete past cosmic evolution than the standard cosmology. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.