I realise there's a handful of physicists working on an effective QFT for gravity, and there are a number of attempts at attacking dark energy at the quantum scale via QED vacuum (I'm sure there are probably other suggestions). However the few papers I have read require an ad-hoc addition to explain present day cosmological acceleration using this approach (I guess akin to a cosmological constant), unless somebody knows better.

 

My questions are; is a solution for quantum gravity required before a QFT for dark energy can be solved (the effect of which is much weaker than gravity), i.e are the two possibly intrinsically related, or do the current proposed mechanisms for dark energy put it in a different ball park to quantum gravity ? Is it too early to even attempt to marriage the two at this stage ?

 

This level of physics is beyond my scope, so I hope these are not ill formed questions.

 

My questions are; is a solution for quantum gravity required before a QFT for dark energy can be solved ...

The energy scale of dark energy is far from the Planck energy, so I would expect that a good theory of dark energy without quantum gravity can be found.