Dynamical relaxation of dark energy: A solution to early inflation, late-time acceleration and the cosmological constant problem

In recent years different explanations are provided for both an inflation and a recent acceleration in the expansion of the universe. In this Letter we show that a model of physical interest is the modification of general relativity with a Gauss-Bonnet term coupled to a dynamical scalar-field as predicted by certain versions of string theory. This construction provides a model of evolving dark energy that naturally explains a dynamical relaxation of the vacuum energy (gravitationally repulsive pressure) to a small value (exponentially close to zero) after a sufficient Dumber of e-folds. The model also leads to a small deviation from the w = -1 prediction of non-evolving dark energy. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.