  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.
