Gravitational Dipoles: A Microscopic Foundation for ΛCDM
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: A Schwinger process is the decay of an unstable field vacuum into a complementarypair of real excitations that draws energy from the field and would annihilate, returning that energy,if recombined. In quantum electrodynamics a strong electric field produces electron-positron pairsin this way. We apply the same process to gravity, with curvature in the role of the field. Thecomplementary pair is then geometric: a positive-curvature well, whose geodesics converge, and anegative-curvature tower, whose geodesics diverge, summing to zero. We show that the consequences ofthis single property account for the discharge and graceful exit of inflation and for the post-inflationarydark sector: self-trapped wells behave as cold dark matter, the residual tower background as darkenergy, and their common origin in compensated pairs makes the two comparable in magnitude. Nomodification to the Einstein equations and no new particle species is required; the dark sector isgeometry. The framework assumes only that a gravitational Schwinger process exists—that curvaturedipoles can be produced this way—and derives the rest.
Author: Schneider, Keith
Institution: University of Delaware
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7163884948