Frozen rigging model of the energy dominated universe

Abstract

Composite rigging systems, involving membranes that meet on strings that meet on monopoles, arise naturally by the Kibble mechanism as topological defects in field theories involving spontaneous symmetry breaking. Such systems will tend to freeze out into static lattice type configurations with energy contribution ultimately be provided by the membranes. It has been suggested by Bucher and Spergel that on scales large compared with the relevant (interstellar separation) distance characterising the relevant mesh length, such a system may behave as a rigidity - stabilised solid, having an approximately isotropic stress energy tensor with negative pressure, as given by a polytropic index $γ=w+1=1/3$. It has recently been shown that such a system can be rigid enough to be stable if the number of membranes meeting at a junction is even (though not if it is odd). Using as examples an approximately O(3) symmetric scalar field model that can provide an ``8 color'' (body centered) cubic lattice, and an approximate U(1)$\times$ U(1) model offering a disordered ``5 color'' lattice, it is argued that such a mechanism can account naturally for the observed dark energy dominance of the universe, without ad hoc assumptions, other than that the relevant symmetry breaking phase transition should have occurred somewhere about the Kev energy range.