Pseudo-redundant vacuum energy
Abstract
We discuss models that can account for today's dark energy. The underlying cosmological constant may be Planck scale but starts as a redundant coupling which can be eliminated by a field redefinition. The observed vacuum energy arises when the redundancy is explicitly broken, say by a non-minimal coupling to curvature. We give a recipe for constructing models, including R + 1/R type models, that realize this mechanism and satisfy all solar system constraints on gravity. A similar model, based on Gauss-Bonnet gravity, provides a technically natural explanation for dark energy and exhibits an interesting see-saw behavior: a large underlying cosmological constant gives rise to both low and high curvature solutions. Such models could be statistically favored in the string landscape.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.4526,
title = {Pseudo-redundant vacuum energy},
author = {Puneet Batra and Kurt Hinterbichler and Lam Hui and Daniel Kabat},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.4526},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
39 pages. Appendix added. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D