Quintessential Adjustment of the Cosmological Constant

Abstract

We construct a time dependent adjustment mechanism for the cosmological "constant" which could be at work in a late Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe dominated by quintessence and matter. It makes use of a Brans-Dicke field that couples to the evolving standard-model vacuum energy density. Our explicit model possesses a stable late-time solution with a fixed ratio of matter and field energy densities. No fine tuning of model parameters or initial conditions is required.