Related papers: The case for a Casimir cosmology
In 1998 astronomers discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Somehow, something must have made gravity repulsive on cosmological scales. This something was called dark energy; it is described by Einstein's cosmological…
Astrophysics has given empirical evidence for the cosmological constant that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics has proven experimentally that the quantum vacuum exerts forces - the van der…
Whereas the total energy in zero-point fluctuations of the particle physics vacuum gives rise to the cosmological constant problem, differences in the vacuum give rise to real physical phenomena, such as the Casimir effect. Hence we…
Dark energy is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of today. The idea that dark energy originates from quantum vacuum fluctuations has circulated since the late '60s, but theoretical estimations of vacuum energy have disagreed with the…
We discuss a numerical relation between the cosmological constant and the vacuum energy arising from the Casimir effect in extra dimensions
Vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir effect are considered in a cosmological setting. It is suggested that the dark energy, which recent observations suggest make up 73% of our universe, is vacuum energy due to a causal boundary effect at…
It has been speculated that the zero-point energy of the vacuum, regularized due to the existence of a suitable ultraviolet cut-off scale, could be the source of the non-vanishing cosmological constant that is driving the present…
Vacuum fluctuations have observable consequences, like the Casimir force appearing between two mirrors in vacuum. This force is now measured with good accuracy and agreement with theory. We discuss the meaning and consequences of these…
It has been argued since 1948, when it was experimentally demonstrated, that the Casimir effect-where two non-charged conducting plates have a weak but measurable force on each other dependent on the inverse fourth power of the distance…
In discussions of the cosmological constant, the Casimir effect is often invoked as decisive evidence that the zero point energies of quantum fields are "real''. On the contrary, Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be…
In this paper we continue the investigations in \cite{1} concerning the origin of the cosmological constant. First of all, we generalise the results in \cite{1,2} by considering a continuum approximation for a radiation field in a…
Physics invites the idea that space contains energy whose gravitational effect approximates that of Einstein's cosmological constant, Lambda; nowadays the concept is termed dark energy or quintessence. Physics also suggests the dark energy…
The origins of the cosmological constant are discussed from the perspective of the imaginary-time field theory. The concept of the thermal time, which is related to the Tolman-Ehrehfest relation, and the conformal invariance of the actions…
In connection with the problem of dark matter, we discuss recent results on constraining the parameters of axion-to-nucleon interaction following from the experiment on measuring the difference of Casimir forces. It is shown that this…
The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement…
A variety of observations indicate that the universe is dominated by dark energy with negative pressure, one possibility for which is a cosmological constant. If the dark energy is a cosmological constant, a fundamental question is: Why has…
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…
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…
We discuss how we remove a huge discrepancy between the theory of a cosmological constant, due to the zero-point energies of matter fields, and the observation. The technique of dimensional regularization plays a decisive role. We…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…