Quasiparticle Cosmology

Abstract

We consider thermodynamics of the Universe within a quasiparticle approach where the collective dynamics of a system is governed by the thermal mass of the constituents. The spacetime dependence of this thermal mass leads to a negative contribution to the pressure and a positive contribution to the energy density, similar to the effect due to dark energy. We propose a mechanism based on thermodynamic arguments to quantify this contribution from the thermal vacuum of the system. For a sufficiently large spacetime variation of the thermal mass, the effective pressure can become negative and could mimic a dark energy equation of state. We validate our framework using results from renormalizable interacting scalar field theory and demonstrate an application on QCD axion.