Dark Energy Driven by the Cohen-Kaplan-Nelson Bound

Abstract: In this work, we confront the bound on an ultraviolet cutoff (UV) of a quantum field theory (QFT) proposed by Cohen, Kaplan, and Nelson (CKN) with the latest results of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). The former relates the UV cutoff with an infrared (IR) cutoff of the theory by excluding all states describing a black hole. Identifying now the IR cutoff with the Hubble horizon yields a time-varying contribution of the vacuum energy to the dark energy density of the universe. At the same time the DESI results in combination with other cosmological data point towards a preference of time-varying dark energy models over $\Lambda$CDM.