Historical research guide · 0642 · 2025
Transition from Inflation to Dark Energy in Superfluid Vacuum Theory
Konstantin G. Zloshchastiev
In one minute
Konstantin Zloshchastiev builds a cosmology out of one idea: that empty space is a quantum liquid. In superfluid vacuum theory the vacuum is a Bose liquid living in ordinary three-dimensional space, and the four-dimensional spacetime we measure — along with relativity itself — is what small ripples in that liquid look like from inside it. Zloshchastiev takes the simplest possible motion of the liquid, a steady laminar flow at constant velocity, and shows that it generates, with nothing added by hand, three scalar fields cosmologists normally postulate separately: the dilaton that drives inflation, and the quintessence and tachyonic phantom pair, known together as quintom, used to describe today’s accelerating expansion. All three turn out to be the same underlying thing seen at different stages — the density of the superfluid vacuum and its fluctuations, projected onto a relativistic observer’s instruments. The paper’s conclusion is that inflation and dark energy are two manifestations of a single object, the superfluid vacuum, and that the transition between them is a change in the fluid rather than a change of theory.
Connection
This is chapter 5’s thesis written as a derivation: treat the vacuum as a quantum fluid and spacetime, the scalar fields of cosmology, and dark energy all come out of the fluid’s density rather than being assumed. It also supplies chapter 2’s sharpest hinge — in this model the speed of light itself is set by the vacuum’s quantum state, which is exactly the link from field density to the metric that the site’s unified picture in chapter 13 turns on.
From the source
The physical vacuum is a quantum liquid with suppressed dissipative fluctuations, living in three-dimensional Euclidean space; four-dimensional curved spacetime and Lorentz symmetry are induced phenomena that appear through the superfluid–spacetime correspondence, not exact symmetries of the underlying theory.Section 2, Superfluid Vacuum Theory
In the logarithmic model the speed of light follows from the vacuum’s own quantum state — the squared speed of light goes as the reduced Planck constant divided by twice the particle mass, times the difference between the state’s eigenfrequency and the nonlinear coupling — and only a logarithmic nonlinearity gives a limit independent of density, which is what relativity requires.Section 2, Equation (4)
The simplest superflow there is — laminar, at constant velocity — already puts a relativistic observer inside a conformally flat four-dimensional spacetime whose conformal factor is the superfluid density, and de Sitter expansion is the case where that density falls off as the inverse square of conformal time.Section 3, SVT Cosmology, Equations (5) and (6)
When vacuum density fluctuations stop being negligible, the original dilaton field decays into a quintessence field and a tachyonic phantom field whose kinetic couplings carry opposite signs — so the quintom of dark-energy cosmology is derived from the fluid’s dynamics rather than postulated.Section 4, The Transition, Equations (9) to (12)
In the resulting quinton model the phantom’s kinetic coupling is a function of the quintessence field rather than a constant, so at large quintessence — high background density compared with the critical density — the phantom decouples and the system becomes purely quintessential; this non-minimal coupling is a previously unexplored generalisation of cosmological phantom models.Section 4 and Section 5, Equation (13)
Dilaton-driven inflation and the effects attributed to dark energy are different manifestations of one object, the superfluid vacuum, and the same logarithmic model in its rotationally symmetric limit fits galaxy rotation curves — including galaxies whose velocity profiles never flatten — which is the observational front on which the picture is tested.Section 6, Discussion and Conclusions
The way in
https://doi.org/10.3390/quantum7010007How to cite it
Konstantin G. Zloshchastiev (2025) Transition from Inflation to Dark Energy in Superfluid Vacuum Theory doi:10.3390/quantum7010007