Related papers: The Cosmological Constant: A Categorical View
Recently a phenomenological relationship for the observed cosmological constant has been discussed by Motl and Carroll in the context of treating the cosmological constant as a $2\times 2$ matrix but no specific realization of the idea was…
We use the recently discovered universality of Einstein equations in the first order formalism to suggest a positive definite Euclidean action. Possible implications for quantum gravity are considered. We discuss the Hawking and Coleman…
We compute the cosmological constant of a spherical space in the limit of weak gravity. To this end we use a duality developed by the present authors in a previous work. This duality allows one to treat the Newtonian cosmological fluid as…
In applications of Einstein gravity one replaces the quantum-mechanical energy-momentum tensor of sources such as the degenerate electrons in a white dwarf or the black-body photons in the microwave background by c-number matrix elements.…
This letter explores how a reinterpretation of the generalized uncertainty principle as an effective variation of Planck's constant provides a physical explanation for a number of fundamental quantities and couplings. In this context, a…
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…
Recent astrophysical observations seem to indicate that the cosmological constant is small but nonzero and positive. The old cosmological constant problem asks why it is so small; we must now ask, in addition, why it is nonzero (and is in…
We propose that the solution to the cosmological vacuum energy puzzle may come from the infrared sector of the effective theory of gravity, where the impact of the trace anomaly is of upmost relevance. We proceed by introducing two…
We consider 2+1 dimensional gravity with a cosmological constant, and explore a duality that exists between space-times that have the De Sitter group SO(3,1) as its local isometry group. In particular, the Lorentzian theory with a positive…
The existence of a simple spherically symmetric and static solution of the Einstein equations in the presence of a cosmological constant vanishing outside a definite value of the radial distance is investigated. A particular succession of…
The cosmological constant is normally introduced as an additional term entering the Einstein-Hilbert (EH) action. In this letter we demonstrate that instead, it appears naturally from the standard EH action as an invariant term emerging…
We consider a dynamical approach to the cosmological constant. There is a scalar field with a potential whose minimum occurs at a generic, but negative, value for the vacuum energy, and it has a non-standard kinetic term whose coefficient…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
We propose that the observed value of the cosmological constant may be explained by a fundamental uncertainty in the spacetime metric, which arises when combining the principle that mass and energy curve spacetime with the quantum…
We extend General Relativity by promoting Planck scale and the cosmological constant into integration constants, interpreted as fluxes of $4$-forms hiding in the theory. When we include the charges of the $4$-forms, these `constants' can…
It is shown that topological changes in space-time are necessary to make General Relativity compatible with the Newtonian limit and to solve the hierarchy of the fundamental interactions. We detail how topology and topological changes…
It is shown that in the theory of discrete quantum gravity the cosmological constant problem can be solved due to the phenomena of elliptic operators spectrum "loosening" and universe inflation.
At the level of the Planck scale, the spacetime metric has to be considered a quantum variable. Conformal quantum fluctuations of the metric tensor are studied here. They lead to an extra term in the Einstein equations which can be…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
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…