English

Disordered Locality as an Explanation for the Dark Energy

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-09-24 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We discuss a novel explanation of the dark energy as a manifestation of macroscopic non-locality coming from quantum gravity, as proposed by Markopoulou. It has been previously suggested that in a transition from an early quantum geometric phase of the universe to a low temperature phase characterized by an emergent spacetime metric, locality might have been "disordered". This means that there is a mismatch of micro-locality, as determined by the microscopic quantum dynamics and macro-locality as determined by the classical metric that governs the emergent low energy physics. In this paper we discuss the consequences for cosmology by studying a simple extension of the standard cosmological models with disordered locality. We show that the consequences can include a naturally small vacuum energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0903.5303,
  title  = {Disordered Locality as an Explanation for the Dark Energy},
  author = {Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and Lee Smolin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.5303},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

A slightly modified version of this article appeared in PRD

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