English

Conformal gravity and a natural solution to the cosmological constant problem

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

With attempts to quench the cosmological constant Λ\Lambda having so far failed, we instead investigate what could be done if Λ\Lambda is not quenched and actually gets to be as big as elementary particle physics suggests. Since the quantity relevant to cosmology is actually ΩΛ\Omega_{\Lambda}, quenching it to its small measured value is equally achievable by quenching not Λ\Lambda but GG instead, with the GG relevant to cosmology then being much smaller than that measured in a low energy Cavendish experiment. A gravitational model in which this explicitly takes place, viz. conformal gravity, is presented, with the model being found to provide for a completely natural, non fine tuned accounting of the recent high zz accelerating universe supernovae data, no matter how big Λ\Lambda itself actually gets to be. Thus to solve the cosmological constant problem we do not need to change or quench the energy content of the universe, but rather only its effect on cosmic evolution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9901219,
  title  = {Conformal gravity and a natural solution to the cosmological constant problem},
  author = {Philip D. Mannheim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9901219},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

aipproc.sty, 3 pages (updated version v2, conclusions unchanged). To appear in proceedings of "20th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics", Austin, December 2000, J. C. Wheeler and H. Martel (Eds.), American Institute of Physics, NY (2001)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:45:32.803Z