Generalized holographic dark energy and the IR cutoff problem

We consider a holographic dark energy model, in which both the cosmological-constant (CC) energy density rho(Lambda) and the Newton constant G(N) are varying quantities, to study the problem of setting an effective field-theory IR cutoff. Assuming that ordinary matter scales canonically, we show that the continuity equation univocally fixes the IR cutoff, provided a law of variation for either rho(Lambda) or G(N) is known. Previous considerations on holographic dark energy disfavor the Hubble parameter as a candidate for the IR cutoff (for spatially flat universes), since in this case the ratio of dark energy to dark matter is not allowed to vary, thus hindering a deceleration era of the universe for the redshifts z greater than or similar to 0.5. On the other hand, the future event horizon as a choice for the IR cutoff is being favored in the literature, although the "coincidence problem" usually cannot be addressed in that case. We extend considerations to spatially curved universes, and show that with the Hubble parameter as a choice for the IR cutoff one always obtains a universe that never accelerates or a universe that accelerates all the time, thus making the transition from deceleration to acceleration impossible. Next, we apply the IR cutoff consistency procedure to a renormalization-group (RG) running CC model, in which the low-energy variation of the CC is due to quantum effects of particle fields having masses near the Planck scale. We show that bringing such a model (having the most general cosmology for running CC universes) in full accordance with holography amounts to having such an IR cutoff which scales as a square root of the Hubble parameter. We find that such a setup, in which the only undetermined input represents the true ground state of the vacuum, can give early deceleration as well as late-time acceleration. The possibility of further improvement of the model is also briefly indicated.