I will discuss a unified framework for studying late time cosmic acceleration. I will show that by using
the methods of effective field theory, many of the existing models of dark energy can be subsumed
in a single framework, rather than many compartmentalized theories. This approach has the advantage
that existing observational constraints (which I will discuss) can be combined with theoretical consistency
conditions such as locality and unitarity. By combining both types of constraints we will see that it is quite
challenging to build realistic models to account for the current period of accelerated expansion.
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