Related papers: How to Hide a Cosmological Constant
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance-physics, corresponding to an energy scale of at least 100 GeV. The actual tiny…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
We discuss the cosmological constant puzzle and possible connections to the (meta-)stability of the Higgs vacuum suggested by recent LHC results. A possible explanation involves new critical phenomena in the ultraviolet, close to the Planck…
A static non-singular 10-dimensional closed Friedmann universe of Planck size, filled with a perfect fluid with an equation of state with w = -2/3, can arise spontaneously by a quantum fluctuation from nothing in 11-dimensional spacetime. A…
Spacetime is foamy due to quantum fluctuations. Various gedanken experiments show that distances fluctuate by amounts consistent with the holographic principle, hence the name "holographic quantum foam" (HQF). One important prediction of…
We argue that it is a fluctuational underpinning of the Quantum vacuum which on the one hand gives a stochastic character to the conservation laws, and on the other is required for explaining the recently observed acceleration of the…
We examine a simple theoretical model to estimate (by fine tuning condition) the value of the cosmological constant. We assume, in analogy with holographic principle, that cosmological constant, like classical surface tension coefficient in…
The cosmological constant problem is turned around to argue for a new foundational physics postulate underlying a consistent quantum theory of gravity and matter, such as string theory. This postulate is a quantum equivalence principle…
Within conventional big bang cosmology, it has proven to be very difficult to understand why today's cosmological constant is so small. In this paper, we show that a cyclic model of the universe can naturally incorporate a dynamical…
At Planck-scale, spacetime is "foamy" due to quantum fluctuations predicted by quantum gravity. Here we consider the possibility of using spacetime foam-induced phase incoherence of light from distant galaxies and gamma-ray bursters to…
I propose an experiment that may be performed, with present low temperature and cryogenic technology, to reveal Wheeler's quantum foam. It involves coupling an optical photon's momentum to the center of mass motion of a macroscopic…
In a recent work we have argued that nosy energy momentum diffusion due to space-time discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) can be responsible for the generation of a cosmological constant…
We discuss the naturalness of exponential potentials for quintessence, showing that the resulting almost flat direction in the space of scalar fields, as well as the small time dependent cosmon mass, can be related to an anomalous…
I argue that a solution to the cosmological constant problem is to assume that the expectation value of the quantum vacuum stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric tensor with a negative energy density and positive pressure. This…
A value of the cosmological constant in a toy model of the five-dimensional universe is calculated in such a manner that it remains in agreement with both astronomical observations and the quantum field theory concerning the zero-point…
It is shown that in the model [3,4] of quantum mechanics besides probability amplitudes, the Planck constant and the Fock space, the cosmological constant also appear in the natural way. The Poisson brackets are generalized for the case of…
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…
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…
An accelerated universe should naturally have a vacuum energy density determined by its dynamical curvature. The cosmological constant is most likely a temporary description of a dynamical variable that has been drastically evolving from…
In this work a satisfactory, simple theoretical prediction of the data corresponding to observationally (by fine tuning condition) estimated value of the cosmological constant is given. It is supposed (in conceptually analogy with…