Related papers: Asymptotics with a cosmological constant: The solu…
Motivated by some recent speculative attempts to model the dark energy, scalar fields with negative kinetic energy coupled to gravity without a cosmological constant are considered. It is shown that in the presence of an ordinary fluid, any…
In this paper we study a new symmetry argument that results in a vacuum state with strictly vanishing vacuum energy. This argument exploits the well-known feature that de Sitter and Anti- de Sitter space are related by analytic…
An approach that allows studying the relationship between the neutralization of the cosmological constant and instantons for cosmology coupled to antisymmetric fields is proposed. Using suitable variables, the Lagrangian leading to the FRW…
A finite and unitary nonlocal formulation of quantum gravity is applied to the cosmological constant problem. The entire functions in momentum space at the graviton-standard model particle loop vertices generate an exponential suppression…
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…
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…
We introduce a symmetry principle that forbids a bulk cosmological constant in six and ten dimensions. Then the symmetry is extended so that it insures absence of 4-dimensional cosmological constant induced by the six dimensional curvature…
We argue that, when a theory of gravity and matter is endowed with (classical) conformal symmetry, the fine tuning required to obtain the cosmological constant at its observed value can be significantly reduced. Once tuned, the cosmological…
Recent data on supernovae favor high values of the cosmological constant. Spacetimes with a cosmological constant have non-relativistic kinematics quite different from Galilean kinematics. De Sitter spacetimes, vacuum solutions of…
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…
The cosmological constant problem is examined under the assumption that the extrinsic curvature of the space-time contributes to the vacuum. A compensation mechanism based on a variable cosmological term is proposed. Under a suitable…
We show that the cosmological constant appears as a Lagrange multiplier if nature is described by a canonical noncommutative spacetime. It is thus an arbitrary parameter unrelated to the action and thus to vacuum fluctuations. The…
We connect a possible solution for the ``cosmological constant problem'' to the existence of a (postulated) conformal fixed point in a fundamental theory. The resulting cosmology leads to quintessence, where the present acceleration of the…
We demonstrate the existence of static, spherically symmetric globally regular, i.e. solitonic solutions of a shift-symmetric scalar-tensor gravity model with negative cosmological constant. The norm of the Noether current associated to the…
We discuss the cosmological constant problem in the context of higher codimension brane world scenarios with infinite-volume extra dimensions. In particular, by adding higher curvature terms in the bulk action we are able to find smooth…
We point out several subtleties arising in brane-world scenarios of cosmological constant cancellation. We show that solutions with curvature singularities are inconsistent, unless the contribution to the effective four-dimentional…
Astrophysical bounds on the cosmological constant are examined for spherically symmetric bodies. Similar limits emerge from hydrostatical and gravitational equilibrium and the validity of the Newtonian limit. It is argued that the bound…
One hope to solve the cosmological constant problem is to identify a symmetry principle, based on which the cosmological constant can be reduced either to zero, or to a tiny value. Here, we note that requiring that the vacuum state is…
In spontaneously broken supergravity with non-flat potential the vanishing of the cosmological constant is usually associated with a non-trivial balancing of two opposite-sign contributions. We make the simple observation that, in an…
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…