Related papers: Effect of the Trace Anomaly on the Cosmological Co…
It is argued in a recent letter Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 131302(2019) that the effect of a large cosmological constant can be naturally hidden in Planck scale curvature fluctuations. We point out that there are problems with the author's…
The trace anomaly and anomaly-induced action are evaluated for the two-dimensional $2D$ vector theory with classical conformal symmetry. Implementing local conformal symmetry while preserving the gauge invariance requires either giving up…
The standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem is based on one critical assumption---the spacetime is homogeneous and isotropic, which is true only on cosmological scales. However, this problem is caused by extremely small…
I discuss the impact of the positive cosmological constant on the interplay between the equivalence principle in general relativity, and the rules of quantum mechanics. At the non--relativistic level there is an ambiguity in the definition…
We define the notion of Weyl anomalies, measuring the violation of local scale invariance, in interacting quantum field theory on curved spacetimes in the framework of locally covariant field theory. We discuss some general properties of…
The time-translation symmetry of the conformal FLRW frame $\bar{g}=a^{-2}g$ allows reinterpretation of cosmological observation in the static space of a stationary universe, where constant matter density…
The evolution of the wave function in quantum mechanics is deterministic like that of classical waves. Only when we bring in observers the fundamentally different quantum reality emerges. Similarly the introduction of observers changes the…
The trace anomaly $\Delta$ is an important quantity that measures the broken conformal symmetry in neutron star matter. In this work, we present quasi-universal relations that connect the stellar profile of $\Delta$ to the compactness,…
Recent cosmological observations suggest the existence of a positive cosmological constant $\Lambda$ with the magnitude $\Lambda(G\hbar/c^3) \approx 10^{-123}$. This review discusses several aspects of the cosmological constant both from…
We report the effect of the cosmological constant and the internal energy density of a cosmic string on the deflection angle of light in the spacetime of a rotating cosmic string with internal structure. We first revisit the deflection…
The old cosmological-constant (CC) problem indicates an inconsistency of the usual formulation of semiclassical gravity. The usual formulation of semiclassical gravity also seems to be inconsistent with the conventional interpretation of…
We propose a time-varying cosmological constant with a fixed equation of state, which evolves mainly through its interaction with the background during most of the long history of the universe. However, such interaction does not exist in…
A review of some errors made by the author and others in their search for quantum models of gravity in cosmological space-times that asymptote to de Sitter (dS) space in the future. The "static de Sitter Hamiltonian", which measures the…
The de Sitter invariant special relativity is a natural extension of the usual Einstein special relativity. Within this framework a generalization of special relativity (SR) for the de Sitter space-time introduces a new length scale $R$,…
We study how the determination of the Hubble constant from cosmological distance measures is affected by models of dark energy and vice versa. For this purpose, constraints on the Hubble constant and dark energy are investigated using the…
The recent transition from decelerated to accelerated expansion can be seen as a reflection (or "bounce") in the connection variable, defined by the inverse comoving Hubble length ($b=\dot a$, on-shell). We study the quantum cosmology of…
Consistency of the unconventional view of de Sitter space as a quantum theory of gravity with a finite number of degrees of freedom requires that Coleman-De Luccia tunneling rates to vacua with negative cosmological constant should be…
We propose that the constants of Nature we observe (which appear as parameters in the classical action) are quantum observables in a kinematical Hilbert space. When all of these observables commute, our proposal differs little from the…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
The existence of a small, non-zero cosmological constant is one of the major puzzles in fundamental physics. Naively, quantum field theory arguments would imply a cosmological constant which is up to 10$^{120}$ times larger than the…