A Unified Model of Phantom Energy and Dark Matter

To explain the acceleration of the cosmological expansion researchers have considered an unusual form of mass-energy generically called dark energy. Dark energy has a ratio of pressure over mass density which obeys $w=p/\rho<-1/3$. This form of mass-energy leads to accelerated expansion. An extreme form of dark energy, called phantom energy, has been proposed which has $w=p/\rho<-1$. This possibility is favored by the observational data. The simplest model for phantom energy involves the introduction of a scalar field with a negative kinetic energy term. Here we show that theories based on graded Lie algebras naturally have such a negative kinetic energy and thus give a model for phantom energy in a less ad hoc manner. We find that the model also contains ordinary scalar fields and anti-commuting (Grassmann) vector fields which act as a form of two component dark matter. Thus from a gauge theory based on a graded algebra we naturally obtained both phantom energy and dark matter.