English

The Vacuum and the Cosmological Constant Problem

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2008-06-20 v2

Abstract

It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the vacuum polarization tensor--must be eliminated either explicitly or by some form of regularization followed by renormalization. It has recently been shown that lack of gauge invariance is a result of the way the vacuum is defined, and redefining the vacuum so that the theory is gauge invariant may also offer a solution to the cosmological constant problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0711.0220,
  title  = {The Vacuum and the Cosmological Constant Problem},
  author = {Gerald E. Marsh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.0220},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

17 pages, 2 figures. Some clarification in one section of the original submission and minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:39:00.885Z