Degenerate vacua as the origin of the dark energy

Abstract

I propose a new mechanism to account for the observed tiny but finite dark energy in terms of a non-Abelian Higgs theory, which has infinitely many perturbative vacua characterized by a winding number, in the framework of inflationary cosmology without introducing any tiny numbers.

Comments: To be published in Proc. the XVIIIth IAP meeting "On the Nature of Dark Energy."