Related papers: The Universe in a Soap Film
There is some evidence that the Universe is presently undergoing accelerating expansion. This has restored some credit to the scenarios with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. From the point of view of a theory of fundamental…
Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of our physical laws. Any constant varying in space and/or time would reflect the existence of an almost massless field that couples to matter. This will induce a violation of the universality of free…
It is argued that quantum states of geometry, like those of particles, should be coherent on light cones of any size. An exact classical solution, the gravitational shock wave of a relativistic point particle, is used to estimate…
Standard quantum field theory arguments predict an enormous cosmological constant. But what would this mean observationally? For a homogeneous universe the answer is clear, but if the universe is inhomogeneous at the Planck scale, the…
It was recently suggested that the cosmological constant problem as viewed in a non-perturbative framework is intimately connected to the choice of time and a physical Hamiltonian. We develop this idea further by calculating the…
The idea of possible time or space variations of the `fundamental' constants of nature, although not new, is only now beginning to be actively considered by large numbers of researchers in the particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics…
The cosmological constant is one of the most pressing problems in modern physics. We address this issue from an emergent gravity standpoint, by using an analogue gravity model. Indeed, the dynamics of the emergent metric in a Bose-Einstein…
The cosmological constant (term) is the simplest way, presently known, to illustrate the accelerating expansion of the universe. However, because of/despite its simple appearance, there is much confusion surrounding its essence. Theorists…
This is an essay sketching the line of thinking which has led the present author to propose the constituent or atomic model of gravitation more than a decade ago. It turns out that viewing the problem of gravitation as a quantum many body…
The possibility of extending the quantum mechanical superposition principle to free parameters such as the cosmological constant appearing in the Lagrangian of physical theories is examined. If the cosmological constant is subject to a…
In this paper we present a statistical description of the cosmological constant in terms of massless bosons (gravitons). To this purpose, we use our recent results implying a non vanishing temperature ${T_{\Lambda}}$ for the cosmological…
The cosmological constant problem is one of the long-standing issues of modern physics. While we can measure the value of the cosmological constant with great accuracy, we are not able to calculate it in a coherent theoretical framework. On…
Astronomical observations have shown that the expansion of the universe is at present accelerating, in a way consistent with the presence of a positive cosmological constant. This is a major puzzle, because we do not understand: why the…
There are now evidences that the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ has a non-zero positive value. Alternative scenarios to a pure cosmological constant model are provided by quintessence, an effective negative pressure fluid permeating the…
We address issues on the origin of gravity and the cosmological constant problem based on a recent understanding about the correspondence between noncommutative field theory and gravity. We suggest that the cosmological constant problem can…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
We consider further consequences of recently [1] revealed role of cosmological constant \Lambda as of a physical constant, along with the gravitational one to define the gravity i.e. the General Relativity and its low-energy limit. We now…
We study the non-perturbative renormalisation of quantum gravity in four dimensions. Taking care to disentangle physical degrees of freedom, we observe the topological nature of conformal fluctuations arising from the functional measure.…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
We consider implications of the microscopic dynamics of spacetime for the evolution of cosmological models. We argue that quantum geometry effects may lead to stochastic fluctuations of the gravitational constant, which is thus considered…