Cosmology via Metric-Independent Volume-Form Dynamics

Abstract: The method of non-Riemannian volume-forms (metric-independent covariant integration measure densities on the spacetime manifold) is applied to construct a unified model of dynamical dark energy plus dark matter as a dust fluid resulting from a hidden Noether symmetry of the pertinent scalar field Lagrangian. Canonical Hamiltonian treatment and Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of the latter model are briefly discussed.