Related papers: When did vacuum energy of the Universe become cosm…
In the contemporary Cosmology, dark energy is modeled as a perfect fluid, having a very simple equation of state: pressure is proportional to dark energy density. As an alternative, I propose a more complex equation of state, with pressure…
An expanding universe is not expected to have a static vacuum energy density. The so-called cosmological constant $\Lambda$ should be an approximation, certainly a good one for a fraction of a Hubble time, but it is most likely a temporary…
For more seventy years physicists have appreciated that Nature's vacuum is far from empty. The discovery of the Lamb shift in Hydrogen provided dramatic verification of the reality of the quantum vacuum. The advent of gauge theories has led…
A variety of observations indicate that the universe is dominated by dark energy with negative pressure, one possibility for which is a cosmological constant. If the dark energy is a cosmological constant, a fundamental question is: Why has…
In many interesting models, including superstring theories, a negative vacuum energy is predicted. Although this effect is usually regarded as undesirable from a cosmological point of view, we show that this can be the basis for a new…
The cosmological constant is the most economical candidate for dark energy. No other approach really alleviates the difficulties faced by the cosmological constant because, in all other attempts to model the dark energy, one still has to…
Recent measurements suggest our universe has a substantial dark energy component, which is usually interpreted in terms of a cosmological constant. Here we examine how much the form of this dark energy can be modified while still retaining…
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…
It is suggested that the vacuum expectation of the quantum vacuum energy-momentum is zero, but quantum fluctuations give rise to a space-time curvature equivalent to that of a cosmological constant or dark energy. Calculations within…
Quintessence -- the energy density of a slowly evolving scalar field -- may constitute a dynamical form of the homogeneous dark energy in the universe. We review the basic idea in the light of the cosmological constant problem. Cosmological…
I consider a scenario proposed by Fardon, Nelson and Weiner where dark energy and neutrinos are connected. As a result, neutrino masses are not constant but depend on the neutrino number density. By examining the full equation of state for…
We show that current cosmic acceleration can be explained by an almost massless scalar field experiencing quantum fluctuations during primordial inflation. Provided its mass does not exceed the Hubble parameter today, this field has been…
The stress-energy tensor of the quantum vacuum is studied for the particular case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), that is a fictituous universe where only the electromagnetic and the electron-positron fields exist. The integrals involved…
Observational evidence of dark energy that makes the Universe nearly flat at the present epoch is very strong. We study the link between spatial continuity and dark energy. We assume that comoving space is a compact 3-manifold of constant…
Visible matter in the current Universe is a consequence of the phase transition of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This phase transition has occurred at the Universe temperature around $T_c\simeq 165\,$MeV while it was…
We propose a revised formulation of General Relativity for cosmological settings, in which the Einstein constant varies with the energy density of the Universe. We demonstrate that this modification has only phenomenological impact of…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the last major building block of the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark…
The presence of dark energy in the Universe is inferred directly and indirectly from a large body of observational evidence. The simplest and most theoretically appealing possibility is the vacuum energy density (cosmological constant).…
A modified-gravity theory is considered with a four-form field strength F, a variable gravitational coupling parameter G(F), and a standard matter action. This theory provides a concrete realization of the general vacuum variable q as the…