Cosmological dark energy from the cosmic QCD phase transition and colour entanglement

Recent astrophysical observations indicate that the universe is composed of a large amount of dark energy (DE) responsible for an accelerated expansion of the universe, along with a sizeable amount of cold dark matter (CDM), responsible for structure formation. At present, the explanations for the origin or the nature of both CDM and DE seem to require ideas beyond the standard model of elementary particle interactions. Here, for the first time, we show that CDM and DE can arise entirely from the standard principles of strong interaction physics and quantum entanglement. Quantitative agreement with the present data obtains without the need for any adjustable parameters.