Related papers: Cosmological constant and vacuum energy: old and n…
In the more recent literature on cosmological evolutions of the universe the cosmic vacuum energy has become a non-renouncable ingredient. The cosmological constant $\Lambda$, first invented by Einstein, but later also rejected by him,…
Physics invites the idea that space contains energy whose gravitational effect approximates that of Einstein's cosmological constant, Lambda; nowadays the concept is termed dark energy or quintessence. Physics also suggests the dark energy…
The Cosmological Constant Lambda, a concept introduced by Einstein in 1917, has been with us ever since in different variants and incarnations, including the broader concept of Dark Energy. Current observations are consistent with a value…
The cosmological constant (CC) problem is the biggest enigma of theoretical physics ever. In recent times, it has been rephrased as the dark energy problem in order to encompass a wider spectrum of possibilities. It is, in any case, a…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance physics, corresponding to an energy at least as large as the Fermi scale. The…
A large value of the cosmological constant (CC) is induced in the Standard Model (SM) of Elementary Particle Physics because of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking. To provide a small value of the observable CC one has to introduce the vacuum…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
Within the $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model, the absolute value of Einstein's cosmological constant $\Lambda$, sometimes expressed as the gravitating mass-energy density $\rho_\Lambda$ of the physical vacuum, is a fundamental constant of…
We present a centennial review of the history of the term known as the cosmological constant. First introduced to the general theory of relativity by Einstein in 1917 in order to describe a universe that was assumed to be static, the term…
We study the role of the cosmological constant (CC) as a component of dark energy (DE). It is argued that the cosmological term is in general unavoidable and it should not be ignored even when dynamical DE sources are considered. From the…
Next year we will celebrate 100 years of the cosmological term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's gravitational field equations, also 50 years since the cosmological constant problem was first formulated by Zeldovich, and almost about two decades of…
Dynamical dark energy (DE) has been proposed to explain various aspects of the cosmological constant (CC) problem(s). For example, it is very difficult to accept that a strictly constant Lambda-term constitutes the ultimate explanation for…
The cosmological constant term (CC), $\Lambda$, is a pivotal ingredient in the standard model of cosmology or $\Lambda$CDM, but it is a rigid quantity for the entire cosmic history. This is unnatural and inconsistent. Different theoretical…
The paper deals with the scale discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy in cosmology and the theoretical quantum vacuum energy (cosmological constant problem). Here, we demonstrate that Einstein's equation and an analogy to particle…
The energy density of the vacuum, Lambda, is at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it. Approaches to this problem are tightly constrained by data ranging from elementary observations to precision…
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…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance-physics, corresponding to an energy scale of at least 100 GeV. The actual tiny…
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 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…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe points to a small positive vacuum energy density and negative vacuum pressure. A strong candidate is the cosmological constant in Einstein's equations of General Relativity. The vacuum dark energy…