From asymptotic safety to dark energy

Abstract

We consider renormalization group flow applied to the cosmological dynamical equations. A consistency condition arising from energy-momentum conservation links the flow parameters to the cosmological evolution, restricting possible behaviors. Three classes of cosmological fixed points for dark energy plus a barotropic fluid are found: a dark energy dominated universe, which can be either accelerating or decelerating depending on the RG flow parameters, a barotropic dominated universe where dark energy fades away, and solutions where the gravitational and potential couplings cease to flow. If the IR fixed point coincides with the asymptotically safe UV fixed point then the dark energy pressure vanishes in the first class, while (only) in the de Sitter limit of the third class the RG cutoff scale becomes the Hubble scale. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.