Related papers: Unimodular Gravity Redux
Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantized, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum…
An one-parameter regularization freedom of the Hamiltonian constraint for loop quantum gravity is analyzed. The corresponding spatially flat, homogenous and isotropic model includes the two well-known models of loop quantum cosmology as…
The unimodular theory of gravity is an alternative perspective to traditional Einstein's general relativity and opens new possibilities for exploring its implications in cosmology. In this paper, we investigate the unimodular gravity (UG)…
A two dimensional matter coupled model of quantum gravity is studied in the Dirac approach to constrained dynamics in the presence of a cosmological constant. It is shown that after partial fixing to the conformal gauge the requirement of a…
We consider models of gravitation that are based on unimodular general coordinate transformations (GCT). These transformations include only those which do not change the determinant of the metric. We treat the determinant as a separate…
It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the…
Quantum gravity places entirely new challenges on the formulation of a consistent theory as well as on an extraction of potentially observable effects. Quantum corrections due to the gravitational field are commonly expected to be tiny…
We study a Newtonian cosmological model in the context of a noncommutative space. It is shown that the trajectories of a test particle undergo modifications such that it no longer satisfies the cosmological principle. For the case of a…
In hep-th/0506040 we discussed a classically constrained model of gravity. This theory contains known solutions of General Relativity (GR), and admits solutions that are absent in GR. Here we study cosmological implications of some of these…
We discuss the cosmological constant problem, at the minisuperspace level, within the framework of the so-called normalized general relativity (NGR). We prove that the Universe cannot be closed, and reassure that the accompanying…
We consider a Weyl-invariant formulation of gravity with a cosmological constant in d-dimensional spacetime and show that near two dimensions the classical action reduces to the timelike Liouville action. We show that the renormalized…
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…
Unimodular gravity (UG) is an important theory which may explain the smallness of the cosmological constant. To get insight into the covariant quantization of UG, we discuss the BRST quantization of General Relativity (GR) with a…
The cosmological constant problem is the principal obstacle in the attempt to interpret dark energy as the quantum vacuum energy. We suggest that the obstacle can be removed, i.e. that the cosmological constant problem can be resolved by…
We consider that the cosmological constant is associated with the vacuum energy density of a particle physics model. In the path integral formalism of euclidean quantum gravity and in the background of the Robertson Walker metric we…
We re-examine results of the Liouville theory and provide arguments that a {\it negative} bare cosmological constant is essential to define two-dimensional quantum gravity. From this we are naturally led to a regularization of quantum…
Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one (time) dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantised, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum…
The bare bones of a theory of quantum gravity are exposed. It may have the potential to solve the cosmological constant problem. Less certain is its behavior in the Newtonian limit.
We have critically compared different approaches to the cosmological constant problem, which is at the edge of elementary particle physics and cosmology. This problem is deeply connected with the difficulties formulating a theory of quantum…
The quantization of Einstein-Maxwell theory with a cosmological constant is considered. We obtain all logarithmically divergent terms in the one-loop effective action that involve only the background electromagnetic field. This includes…