Related papers: Is negative kinetic energy meta-stable?
The assumption that quantum systems relax to a stationary state in the long-time limit underpins statistical physics and much of our intuitive understanding of scientific phenomena. For isolated systems this follows from the eigenstate…
The assumption of asymptotic flatness for isolated astrophysical bodies may be considered an approximation when one considers a cosmological context where a cosmological constant or vacuum energy is present. In this framework we study the…
A non-singular bouncing cosmology is generically obtained in loop quantum cosmology due to non-perturbative quantum gravity effects. A similar picture can be achieved in standard general relativity in the presence of a scalar field with a…
The behavior of the gravitating vacuum energy density in an expanding universe is discussed. A scenario is presented with a step-wise relaxation of the vacuum energy density. The vacuum energy density moves from plateau to plateau and…
In supersymmetric models with the run-away vacua or with the stable but non-supersymmetric ground state there exist stable field configurations (vacua) which restore one half of supersymmetry and are characterized by constant positive…
We present a consistent effective theory that violates the null energy condition (NEC) without developing any instabilities or other pathological features. The model is the ghost condensate with the global shift symmetry softly broken by a…
Observations provide increasingly strong evidence that the universe is accelerating. This revolutionary advance in cosmological observations confronts theoretical cosmology with a tremendous challenge, which it has so far failed to meet.…
It is shown that passive gravitational mass operator of a hydrogen atom in the post-Newtonian approximation of the general relativity does not commute with its energy operator, taken in the absence of gravitational field. Nevertheless, the…
We continue our studies of the ghost condensate (GC) with sixth-order dispersion relation. Contrary to the GC with quartic dispersion relation, we find that the correction to the Newtonian potential explicitly depends on the space and time…
Recent determinations of the equation of state of dark energy hint that this may well be of the phantom type, i.e., $w_{de} < -1$. If confirmed by future experiments, this would strongly point to the existence of fields that violate the…
An speculative solution for the cosmological constant problem is proposed. It is argued that while the true quantum vacuum energy density is of the order of $M_P^4$, the observed classical vacuum energy density may be much smaller due to…
By studying the present cosmological data, particularly on CMB, SNeIA and LSS, we find that the future fate of the universe, for simple linear models of the dark energy equation-of-state, can vary between the extremes of (I) a divergence of…
We discover that quantum dynamical tunneling, occurring between phase space regions in a classically forbidden way, can break conserved quantities in pseudointegrable systems. We rigorously prove that a conserved quantity in a class of…
The effective action in renormalizable quantum theory of gravity provides entropy because the total Hamiltonian vanishes. Since it is a renormalization group invariant that is constant in the process of cosmic evolution, we can show…
We construct examples of static, spherically symmetric wormhole solutions in general relativity with a minimally coupled scalar field $\phi$ whose kinetic energy is negative in a restricted region of space near the throat (of arbitrary…
A substantial body of phenomenological and theoretical work over the last few years strengthens the possibility that the vacuum energy density (VED) of the universe is dynamical, and in particular that it adopts the `running vacuum model'…
We suggest that the current acceleration of the universe may be explained by the vacuum energy of a hidden sector which is stuck in a state of equilibrium between phases. The phases are associated to a late-time first-order phase…
The self-accelerating universe realizes the accelerated expansion of the universe at late times by large-distance modification of general relativity without a cosmological constant. The Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) braneworld model…
A possible candidate for the present accelerated expansion of the Universe is ''phantom energy'', which possesses an equation of state of the form $\omega\equiv p/\rho<-1$, consequently violating the null energy condition. As this is the…
Dark energy with the usually used equation of state $p=w\rho$, where $w=const<0$ is hydrodynamically unstable. To overcome this drawback we consider the cosmology of a perfect fluid with a linear equation of state of a more general form…