English

The Well-Tempered Cosmological Constant: Fugue in B$^\flat$

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2021-01-15 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Zero point fluctuations of quantum fields should generate a large cosmological constant energy density in any spacetime. How then can we have anything other than de Sitter space without fine tuning? Well tempering -- dynamical cancellation of the cosmological constant using degeneracy within the field equations -- can replace a large cosmological constant with a much lower energy state. Here we give an explicit mechanism to obtain a Minkowski solution, replacing the cosmological constant with zero, and testing its attractor nature and persistence through a vacuum phase transition. We derive the general conditions that Horndeski scalar-tensor gravity must possess, and evolve in a fugue of functions, to deliver nothing and make the universe be flat.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.01723,
  title  = {The Well-Tempered Cosmological Constant: Fugue in B$^\flat$},
  author = {Stephen Appleby and Eric V. Linder},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.01723},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

15 pages, 3 figures