Related papers: Vacuum energy and trace anomaly
We discuss the main myths related to the vacuum energy and cosmological constant, such as: ``unbearable lightness of space-time''; the dominating contribution of zero point energy of quantum fields to the vacuum energy; non-zero vacuum…
The majority of renormalizable field theories possessing the scale invariance at the classical level exhibits the trace anomaly once quantum corrections are taken into account. This leads to the breaking of scale and conformal invariance.…
We present a model in which the breackdown of conformal symmetry of a quantum stress-tensor due to the trace anomaly is related to a cosmological effect in a gravitational model. This is done by characterizing the traceless part of the…
In this paper we investigate the trace anomaly in a spacetime where single events are de-localized as a consequence of short distance quantum coordinate fluctuations. We obtain a modified form of heat kernel asymptotic expansion which does…
We briefly review the key aspect of the QCD instanton vacuum in relation to the quantum breaking of conformal symmetry and the trace anomaly. We use Ji$^\prime s$ invariant mass decomposition of the energy momentum tensor together with the…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
We discuss the issue of the cosmological constant in non-commutative non-supersymmetric gauge theories. In particular, in orbifold field theories non-commutativity acts as a UV cut-off. We suggest that in these theories quantum corrections…
The trace anomaly of gluodynamics on the lattice shows clear fingerprints of a dimension two condensate above the phase transition. The condensate manifests itself through even powers of the inverse temperature while the total perturbative…
A scenario based on the scale invariance for explaining the vanishing cosmological constant (CC) is discussed. I begin with a notice on the miraculous fact of the CC problem that the vacuum energies totally vanish at each step of…
It is shown to all orders of perturbation theory that in the effective field theory of general relativity the condition of vanishing of the vacuum energy leads to the same value of the cosmological constant, viewed as a parameter of the…
We discuss for some particular non supersymmetric theories a generalized symmetry that includes both the scale and axial transformations and leads to a single current that may contain also a pseudoscalar term. The method, inspired by the…
The paper deals with a modified theory of gravity and the cosmological consequences. Instead of concerning the field equations directly, we modify a conformally-related and equivalent equation, such that a spontaneous symmetry breaking at…
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…
The vacuum energy response of a quantum field theory is studied as a function of complex external fields coupled to the symmetry-breaking observables of the theory. It is found that the energy density is insensitive to spontaneous symmetry…
We study the vacuum condensate characterizing many physical phenomena. We show that such a condensate may leads to non-trivial components of the dark energy and of the dark matter and may induces the spontaneous supersymmetry breaking, in a…
Apart from the quark and gluon kinetic and potential energies, the nucleon mass includes a novel energy of pure quantum origin resulting from anomalous breaking of scale symmetry. We demonstrate the effects of this quantum anomalous energy…
Many candidate models for dark energy are based on the existence of a classical scalar field. In the context of Quantum Field Theory (QFT), we briefly discus the condensation of such a field from a light quantum scalar field produced by…
General Relativity receives quantum corrections relevant at cosmological distance scales from the conformal scalar degrees of freedom required by the trace anomaly of the quantum stress tensor in curved space. In the theory including the…
General Relativity receives quantum corrections relevant at macroscopic distance scales and near event horizons. These arise from the conformal scalar degrees of freedom in the extended effective field theory of gravity generated by the…
One of the most fundamental questions in cosmology is if dark energy is related just to a constant or it is something more complex. In this work, we call the attention to the fact that, under very general conditions, dark energy can be…