Geometric origin of the cosmological constant from Einstein-Chern-Simons gravity compactified to four dimensions
Abstract
We present a model in which the cosmological constant emerges as a purely geometric effect from the four-dimensional compactification of five-dimensional Einstein-Chern-Simons gravity. The compactification of the extra dimension generates an effective cosmological constant depending on the compactification radius , the coupling parameter , and the trace of the compactified field , rather than being introduced as a free parameter. The resulting field equations are structurally equivalent to those of General Relativity with a cosmological constant, so all known vacuum solutions -- Schwarzschild--de Sitter, Kerr--de Sitter, and FLRW spacetimes -- remain valid. As a concrete application, we derive the Kottler (Schwarzschild--de Sitter) black hole solution. We identify two dynamical regimes. In the weak-field regime, , whose sign is controlled by , requiring fine-tuning to reproduce . In the strong-field regime, dependence on and cancels algebraically, yielding independently of the Chern-Simons coupling. This regime naturally reproduces for , without fine-tuning. The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the cosmological horizon gives , consistent with the Gibbons-Hawking result and admitting a direct geometric interpretation in terms of . This framework geometrically reframes the cosmological constant problem: rather than asking why is small, one asks why is large -- a reformulation compatible with a large extra dimension without violating established gravitational tests.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.01536,
title = {Geometric origin of the cosmological constant from Einstein-Chern-Simons gravity compactified to four dimensions},
author = {M. Cataldo and S. Lepe and C. Riquelme and P. Salgado},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01536},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
9 pages