English

The Cosmological Constant Problem and Kaluza-Klein Theory

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We present technical results which extend previous work and show that the cosmological constant of general relativity is an artefact of the reduction to 4D of 5D Kaluza-Klein theory (or 10D superstrings and 11D supergravity). We argue that the distinction between matter and vacuum is artificial in the context of ND field theory. The concept of a cosmological ``constant'' (which measures the energy density of the vacuum in 4D) should be replaced by that of a series of variable fields whose sum is determined by a solution of ND field equations in a well-defined manner.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0104045,
  title  = {The Cosmological Constant Problem and Kaluza-Klein Theory},
  author = {Paul S. Wesson and Hongya Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0104045},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, no figures, Latex. Accepted by Int. J. Mod. Phys. D