Related papers: Dpes massless QCD have vacuum energy?
It may be difficult to single out the best model of dark energy on the basis of the existing and planned cosmological observations, because many different models can lead to similar observational consequences. However, each particular model…
After some remarks about the history and the mystery of the vacuum energy I shall review the current evidence for a cosmologically significant nearly homogeneous exotic energy density with negative pressure (`Dark Energy'). Special emphasis…
In this report we show that vacuum is a nonlinear optical medium and we discuss what are the optical phenomena that should exist in the framework of the standard model of particle physics. We pay special attention to the low energy limit.…
Following fresh attempts to resolve the problem of the energy density of the vacuum, we reconsider the case where the cosmological constant is derived from a higher-dimensional version of general relativity, and interpret the…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
Several issues related to the structure of the QCD vacuum are reviewed. We concentrate mostly on results concerning instantons and center vortices.
The condensed matter examples, in which the effective gravity appears in the low-energy corner as one of the collective modes of quantum vacuum, provide a possible answer to the question, why the vacuum energy is so small. This answer comes…
Since 1925, exactly four arguments have been forwarded for the assumption of a diverging (respectively --- after regularization --- very huge) zero-point energy of elementary quantum fields. And exactly three arguments have been forwarded…
The general thermodynamic analysis of the quantum vacuum, which is based on our knowledge of the vacua in condensed-matter systems, is consistent with the Einstein earlier view on the cosmological constant. In the equilibrium Universes the…
Creutz [hep-ph/0312225] has argued that nonperturbative effects in QCD lead to an additive ambiguity in the up quark mass, and that "this calls into question the acceptability of attempts to solve the strong CP problem via a vanishing mass…
In a recent paper (Phys. Rev. D95, 103504 (2017)) it is argued that, due to the fluctuations around its mean value, vacuum energy gravitates differently from what previously assumed. As a consequence, the universe would accelerate with a…
The stability of the vacuum for QED in the temporal gauge will be examined. It is generally assumed that the vacuum state is the quantum state with the lowest energy. However, it will be shown that this is not the case for a system…
We discuss the weight of vacuum energy in various contexts. First, we compute the vacuum energy for flat spacetimes of the form $\mathbb{T}^3 \times \mathbb{R}$, where $\mathbb{T}^3$ stands for a general 3-torus. We discover a quite simple…
The behavior of the gravitating vacuum energy density in an expanding universe is discussed. A scenario is presented with a step-wise relaxation of the vacuum energy density. The vacuum energy density moves from plateau to plateau and…
Recently we suggested a reformulation of General Relativity which completely sequesters from gravity {\it all} of the vacuum energy from a protected matter sector, assumed to contain the Standard Model. Here we elaborate further on the…
It is well known that quantum effects can produce negative energy densities, though for limited times. Here we show in the context of two-dimensional CFT that such negative energy densities are present in any non-trivial conformal vacuum…
Standard cosmology poses a number of important questions. Apart from its singular origin, it possesses early and late accelerating phases required to account for observations. The vacuum energy has been considered as a possible way to…
After a brief review of the Maxwell-like approach to gravity we consider the issue of the negative energy of gravitational field which is a consequence of the field approach to the phenomenon of gravitation. Due to the existence of the…
The energy conditions of general relativity permit one to deduce very powerful and general theorems about the behaviour of strong gravitational fields and cosmological geometries. However, the energy conditions these theorems are based on…
An extension of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics and of the concept of entropy to the ground state fluctuations of the quantum fields is studied and some new results are found. At the end a device to extract energy from the vacuum…