The breakdown of conformal symmetry in a conformally invariant scalar-tensor
gravitational model is revisited in the cosmological context. Although the old
scenario of conformal symmetry breaking in cosmology containing scalar field
has already been used in many earlier works, it seems that no special attention
has been paid for the investigation on the possible connection between the
breakdown of conformal symmetry and the existence of dark energy. In this
paper, it is shown that the old scenario of conformal symmetry breaking in
cosmology, if properly interpreted, not only has a potential ability to
describe the origin of dark energy as a symmetry breaking effect, but also may
resolve the coincidence problem.Comment: 11 pages, minor revision, published online in EPJ
