A class of effective field theory models of cosmic acceleration

Abstract

We explore a class of effective field theory models of cosmic accelerationinvolving a metric and a single scalar field. These models can be obtained by starting with a set of ultralight pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons whose couplings to matter satisfy theweak equivalence principle, assuming that one boson is lighter thanall the others, and integrating out the heavier fields.The result is a quintessence model with matter coupling,together with a series of correction terms in the action in a covariant derivative expansion, with specific scalings for the coefficients.After eliminating higher derivative terms and exploiting the field redefinition freedom,we show that the resulting theory contains nine independent free functions of the scalar field when truncated at four derivatives. This is in contrast to the four free functions found insimilar theories of single-field inflation, where matter is notpresent. We discuss several different representations of the theorythat can be obtained using the field redefinition freedom.For perturbations to the quintessence field today on subhorizonlengthscales larger than the Compton wavelength of the heavy fields,the theory is weakly coupled and natural in the sense of t'Hooft. Thetheory admits a regime where the perturbations become modestly nonlinear, but very strongnonlinearities lie outside its domain of validity.