Reinterpreting quintessential dark energy through averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies

Abstract. Regionally averaged relativistic cosmologies have recently been considered as a possible explanation for the apparent late time acceleration of the Universe. This contribution reports on a mean field description of the backreaction in terms of a minimally coupled regionally homogeneous scalar field evolving in a potential, then giving a physical origin to the various phenomenological scalar fields generically called quintessence fields. As an example, the correspondence is then applied to scaling solutions. 1