Scalar field models for an accelerating universe

Abstract

I describe a new class of quintessence+CDM models in which late time scalar field oscillations can give rise to both quintessence and cold dark matter. Additionally, a versatile ansatz for the luminosity distance is used to reconstruct the quintessence equation of state in a model independent manner from observations of high redshift supernovae.

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Proceedings of IAU Symposium 201, `New Cosmological Data and the Values of the Fundamental Parameters', Manchester, U.K., August 2000, eds. A.N. Lasenby and A. Wilkinson, Publications of the Astronomy Society of the Pacific