DARK ENERGY AND THE FUTURE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE

Abstract

We consider the possibility of observing the onset of the late time inflation of our patch of the Universe. The Hubble size criterion and the event horizon criterion are applied to several dark energy models to discuss the problem of future inflation of the Universe. We find that the acceleration has not lasted long enough to confirm the onset of inflation by present observations for the dark energy model with constant equation of state, the holographic dark energy model and the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) model. For the flat ΛCDM model with Ωm0 = 0.3, we find that if we use the Hubble size criterion, we need to wait until the av which is the scale factor at the time when the onset of inflation is observed reaches 3.59 times of the scale factor aT when the Universe started acceleration, and we need to wait until av = 2.3aT to see the onset of inflation if we use the event horizon criterion. For the flat holographic dark energy model with d = 1, we find that av = 3.46aT with the Hubble horizon and av = 2.34aT with the event horizon, respectively. For the flat GCG model with the best supernova fitting parameter α = 1.2, we find that av = 5.50aT with the Hubble horizon and av = 2.08aT with the event horizon, respectively.