A unifying hypothesis of dark energy and dark matter: Negative masses, imaginary charges and dark minus-photons

The idea of a new model explaining the coherent nature of dark matter and dark energy is proposed. Recent works by Farnes (2018) and Socas-Navarro (2019) proposed a cosmological model and its critical analysis in which both dark matter and dark energy are replaced with a single fluid of negative mass. This paper presents a modification of this idea using the hypothesis about the existence of so-called imaginary charges and electromagnetic fields with negative energy density ('minus-fields') proposed by Ya.Terletsky (1991) and derived by us from a commutative generalization of the U(1) gauge symmetry group. It is shown that dark photons could be a partial source of the observed late-time cosmological acceleration, saying that dark energy, or part of it could be not cosmological constant or scalar field (quintessence), but photons with negative energy instead. The unusual properties of imaginary charges ensure the existence of dark matter structures. The Friedmann equation, in case when minus-photons give considerable contribution to the energy balance of the Universe, gives the following condition for the accelerated expansion: . It is found that even a relatively small density of dark negative radiation can lead to a significant change in the expansion dynamics of the Universe and new effects are predicted. Last, we assert the need to develop a new type of detectors that can detect particles and waves with negative energy. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.