English

On a physical description and origin of the cosmological constant

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-10-18 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

In this paper we use and extend the results present in \cite{1,2,3,4} and in particular in \cite{4} to obtain a statistical description of the cosmological constant in a cosmological de Sitter universe in terms of massless excitations with Planckian effects. First of all, we show that at a classical level, the cosmological constant Λ>0\Lambda>0 can be obtained only for T0T\rightarrow 0. Similarly to the black hole case, when quantum effects are taken into account, a representation for Λ\Lambda is possible in terms of massless excitations, provided that quantum corrections to the Misner-Sharp mass are considered. Moreover, thanks to quantum fluctuations, an effective cosmological constant arises depending on the physical scale under consideration, thus representing a possible solution to the cosmological constant problem without introducing a quintessence field. The smalness of the actual value for Λ\Lambda can be due to the existence of a quantum decoherence scale above the Planck length such that the spacetime evolves as a pure de Sitter universe with a small averaged cosmological constant frozen in the lowest energy state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.00683,
  title  = {On a physical description and origin of the cosmological constant},
  author = {Stefano Viaggiu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.00683},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Final version published in Class. Quantum Grav