On the Quantum Origin of a Dark Universe

Abstract

It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that the majority (about 95%) of the total energy budget of the universe is given by dark components, namely Dark Matter and Dark Energy. What constitutes these components remains to be satisfactorily understood however, despite a number of promising candidates. An associated conundrum is that of the coincidence, i.e., the question as to why the Dark Matter and Dark Energy densities are of the same order of magnitude at the present epoch, after evolving over the entire expansion history of the universe. In an attempt to address these, we consider a quantum potential resulting from a quantum corrected Raychaudhuri–Friedmann equation in presence of a cosmic fluid, which is presumed to be a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultralight bosons. For a suitable and physically motivated macroscopic ground state wave function of the BEC, we show that a unified picture of the cosmic dark sector can indeed emerge, thus resolving the issue of the coincidence. The effective Dark energy component turns out to be a cosmological constant, by virtue of a residual homogeneous term in the quantum potential. Furthermore, comparison with the observational data gives an estimate of the mass of the constituent bosons in the BEC, which is well within the bounds predicted from other considerations.