Related papers: Maximum Tension: with and without a cosmological c…
In a toy model we derive the gravitational equation on a self-gravitating curved D-brane. The effective theory on the brane is drastically changed from the ordinal Einstein equation. The net cosmological constant on the brane depends on a…
We advance the viewpoint that only relevant modes of the vacuum fluctuations, namely, with wavelengths conditioned by the size, homogeneity, geometry and topology of the Universe, do contribute into the cosmological constant. A formula is…
It is believed that gravity will be explained in the framework of the existing quantum theory when one succeeds in eliminating divergencies at large momenta or small distances (although the phenomenon of gravity has been observed only at…
Based on some observations, the apparent energy, associated with gravity, of vacuums is defined, with that of normal vacuums to be zero and that of the vacuums losing some energy to be negative. An important application of the energy is its…
The problem of cosmological constant and vacuum energy is usually thought of as the subject of general relativity. However, the vacuum energy is important for the Universe even in the absence of gravity, i.e. in the case when the Newton…
The product of two empirical constants, the dimensionless fine structure constant and the von Klitzing constant (an electrical resistance), turns out to be an exact dimensionless number. Then the accuracy and cosmological time variation (if…
We show that a slowly varying Newton's constant, consistent with existing bounds, can potentially explain a host of observations pertaining to gravitational effects or phenomena across distances spanning from planetary to the cosmological,…
There ought to exist a reformulation of quantum mechanics which does not refer to an external classical spacetime manifold. Such a reformulation can be achieved using the language of noncommutative differential geometry. A consequence which…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
We provide a quantization of the Schwarzschild spacetime in the presence of a cosmological constant, based on midisuperspace methods developed in the spherically symmetric sector of loop quantum gravity, using in particular the 'improved…
The general thermodynamic analysis of the quantum vacuum, which is based on our knowledge of the vacua in condensed-matter systems, is consistent with the Einstein earlier view on the cosmological constant. In the equilibrium Universes the…
We introduce a novel method to circumvent Weinberg's no-go theorem for self-tuning the cosmological vacuum energy: a Lorentz-violating finite-temperature superfluid can counter the effects of an arbitrarily large cosmological constant.…
If quantum fields exist in extra compact dimensions, they will give rise to a quantum vacuum or Casimir energy. That vacuum energy will manifest itself as a cosmological constant. The fact that supernova and cosmic microwave background data…
In order to clarify why the zero-point energy associated with the vacuum fluctuations cannot be a candidate for the dark energy in the universe, a comparison with the Casimir effect is analyzed in some detail. A principle of epistemology is…
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…
We explore two hypotheses. First, the possibility that the quantum vacuum energy density of the Casimir effect contributes to a (local) gravitational vacuum energy density. Second, the possibility that a change in the gravitational coupling…
In gravitational theories with extra dimensions, it is argued that the existence of a positive vacuum energy generically implies catastrophic instability of our four-dimensional world. The most generic instability is a decompactification…
In this thesis the cosmological constant is investigated from two points of view. First, we study the influence of a time-dependent cosmological constant on the late-time expansion of the universe. Thereby, we consider several combinations…
We propose the use of a gravitational uncertainty principle for gravitation. We define the corresponding gravitational Planck's constant and the gravitational quantum of mass. We define entropy in terms of the quantum of gravity with the…
In an attempt to merge the microscopic with the macroscopic worlds, we present a brief study about a force which depends on the Planck force and on the coupling constant that in turn depends on the size of a particle in a particular…