Dark Energy as the Remnant of Inflation
  A QED-based symmetry breaking/bootstrap mechanism, appearing at sufficiently small space-time distances, is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on, to the present day, to provide the "Dark Energy" which is apparently forcing our Universe apart. Very high frequency virtual vacuum currents are assumed to generate weak, effective electromagnetic fields, corresponding to the appearance of an effective 4-potential A_vac (x), which is itself equal to the vacuum expectation value of the operator A(x) in the presence of that A_vac (x). Lorentz invariance is manifest, as every observer would measure the same electric field in his or her own reference frame. Such an effective vacuum field would have no relevance to the motion of ordinary charged particules until particle energies on the order of 10^5 TeV are possible. The model is sufficiently constrained so that one parameter is needed to fit the vacuum energy densities and relevant times for the onset and end of Inflation, as well as those parameters of present day Dark Energy. 
H. M. Fried, Y. Gabellini
hep-th