Cosmological consequences of a scalar field with oscillating equation of state: A possible solution to the fine-tuning and coincidence problems

Abstract

We propose a new dark energy model for solving the cosmological fine-tuning and coincidence problems. A default assumption is that the fine-tuning problem disappears if we do not interpret dark energy as vacuum energy. The key idea to solving the coincidence problem is that the Universe may have several acceleration phases across the whole cosmic history. The specific example we study is a quintessence model with approximately repeated double exponential potential, which only introduces one Planck scale parameter and three dimensionless parameters of order unity. The cosmological background evolution equations can be recast into a four-dimensional dynamical system and its main properties are discussed in details. Preliminary calculations show that our model is able to explain the observed cosmic late-time acceleration.