Related papers: Hiding the cosmological constant
Naive calculations in quantum field theory suggest that vacuum fluctuations should induce an enormous cosmological constant. What if these estimates are right? I argue that even a huge cosmological constant might be hidden in Planck scale…
Wheeler's conjectured "spacetime foam" -- large quantum fluctuations of spacetime at the Planck scale -- could have important implications for quantum gravity, perhaps even explaining why the cosmological constant seems so small. Here I…
We point out that the standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem itself is problematic since it is trying to apply the very large scale homogeneous cosmological model to very small (Planck) scale phenomenon. At small scales,…
Perhaps the cosmological constant really is huge at the Planck scale, but is "hidden" by Planck scale quantum fluctuations of spacetime. I briefly review this proposal and provide some evidence, coming from a simplified midisuperspace…
It is argued in a recent letter Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 131302(2019) that the effect of a large cosmological constant can be naturally hidden in Planck scale curvature fluctuations. We point out that there are problems with the author's…
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…
In this paper I continue the investigation in \cite{1,1b} concerning my proposal on the nature of the cosmological constant. In particular, I study both mathematically and physically the quantum Planckian context and I provide, in order to…
We show that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic field on cosmological scales generates an effective cosmological constant which can account for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Primordial electromagnetic quantum…
The principles of General Relativity allow for a non-vanishing cosmological constant, which can possibly be interpreted at least partially in terms of quantum-fluctuations of matter fields. Depending on sign and magnitude it can cause…
The value of the cosmological constant is one of the major puzzles of modern cosmology: it is tiny but nonzero. Sorkin predicted, from the Causet approach to quantum gravity, that the cosmological constant has quantum fluctuations. The…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid universe is reconsidered and formally simplified by introducing new covariant and gauge-invariant variables with physical interpretations on…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
A recent preprint by Wang and Unruh [arXiv:1911.06110] contains a number of criticisms of my paper, "Hiding the cosmological constant" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 (2019) 131302, arXiv:1809.08277]. While Wang and Unruh suggest an interesting…
We review a cosmology in which particles are fluctuationally created from a background Zero Point Field. This cosmology is consistent with recent observations of an ever expanding and accelerating universe, as also the recently confirmed…
In a previous work [1], it was speculated that the lack of homogeneity of the large-scale structure of the universe may be due to quantum fluctuations of space in the early universe. In [1], this was argued for a Friedmann-type universe for…
In this work we suggest a simple model of the cosmological constant as the coefficient of the quantum tunneling of vacuum fluctuations (with wave length larger than Planck length) at tiny, boundary spherical shell of the universe (with…
In this work, I review some aspects concerning the evolution of quantum low-energy fields in a foamlike spacetime, with involved topology at the Planck scale but with a smooth metric structure at large length scales, as follows. Quantum…
The standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem is based on one critical assumption---the spacetime is homogeneous and isotropic, which is true only on cosmological scales. However, this problem is caused by extremely small…
We consider the standard model with local scale invariance. The theory shows exact scale invariance of dimensionally regulated action. We show that massless gauge fields, which may be abelian or non-abelian, lead to vanishing contribution…