Boson mixing and flavor vacuum in the expanding Universe: a possible candidate for the dark energy

Abstract

We analyze the boson mixing in curved spacetime and compute the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of bosons on the flavor vacuum in spatially flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metrics. We show that the energy-momentum tensor of the flavor vacuum behaves as the effective energy-momentum tensor of a perfect fluid. Assuming a fixed de Sitter background, we show that the equation of state can assume values in the interval [−1, 1], and, in the flat spacetime limit has a value −1, which is the one of the dark energy. The results here presented show that vacuum of mixed bosons like neutrino super-partners, can represent a possible component of the dark energy of the Universe.