Related papers: The Universe in a Soap Film
We consider a wide class of four-dimensional effective field theories in which gravity is coupled to multiple four-forms and their dual scalar fields, with membrane sources charged under the corresponding three-form potentials. Four-form…
Building upon our recently established correspondence between quantum cosmology and the hydrogen atom [1], we investigate the specific sector of a negative cosmological constant ($\Lambda < 0$) in a flat FLRW universe with dust. While the…
We examine the general issue of whether a scale dependent cosmological constant can be consistent with general covariance, a problem that arises naturally in the treatment of quantum gravitation where coupling constants generally run as a…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
The discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating in time is a major discovery which still awaits adequate explanation. It is generally agreed that this implies a cosmic repulsion as a result of the existence of a…
We present an unconventional approach for addressing the old cosmological constant (CC) problem in a class of F(R,G) models of modified gravity. For a CC of arbitrary size and sign the corresponding cosmological evolution follows an…
Flat cosmological models with a cosmological constant on the order of the Einstein-de Sitter critical density are enigmatic in the sense that there does not appear to be any natural explanation for why there should be a cosmological…
Nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. This conclusion -- now supported by numerous observations -- poses the greatest challenge for theoretical physics today. I discuss…
Recently a phenomenological relationship for the observed cosmological constant has been discussed by Motl and Carroll in the context of treating the cosmological constant as a $2\times 2$ matrix but no specific realization of the idea was…
In the framework of a model of minimal of dilatonic gravity (MDG) with cosmological potential we consider: the relations of MDG with nonlinear gravity and string theory; natural cosmological units, defined by cosmological constant; the…
In this paper we use and extend the results present in \cite{1,2,3,4} and in particular in \cite{4} to obtain a statistical description of the cosmological constant in a cosmological de Sitter universe in terms of massless excitations with…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
Quantum fluctuations or other moments of a state contribute to energy expectation values and can imply interesting physical effects. In quantum cosmology, they turn out to be important for a discussion of density bounds and instabilities of…
Cosmological perturbations due to statistical thermal fluctuations in a single fluid characterized by an arbitrary equation of state are computed. Formulas to predict the scalar and tensor perturbation spectra and nongaussianity parameters…
We explore the phenomenology of a two-fluid cosmological model, where the field equations of general relativity (GR) are sourced by baryonic and cold dark matter. We find that the model allows for a unified description of small and large…
Increasing improvements in the independent determinations of the Hubble constant and the age of the universe now seem to indicate that we need a small non-vanishing cosmological constant to make the two independent observations consistent…
The cosmological constant, i.e., the energy density stored in the true vacuum state of all existing fields in the Universe, is the simplest and the most natural possibility to describe the current cosmic acceleration. However, despite its…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
Within the holographic cosmology paradigm, specifically the model of McFadden and Skenderis, but more generally than that, the cosmological constant is found to naturally flow from a large value, to a small value, which can even be as low…
We present an extension of quantum field theory to the case when the spacetime topology fluctuates (spacetime foam). In this extension the number of bosonic fields becomes a variable and the ground state is characterized by a finite…