Related papers: Midisuperspace foam and the cosmological constant
We review the possibility that quantum fluctuations in the structure of space-time at the Planck scale might be subject to experimental probes. We study the effects of space-time foam in an approach inspired by string theory, in which…
We discuss phenomenology of quantum vacuum. Phenomenology of macroscopic systems has three sources: thermodynamics, topology and symmetry. Momentum space topology determines the universality classes of fermionic vacua. The vacuum in its…
A simple model of spacetime foam, made by $N$ wormholes in a semiclassical approximation, is taken under examination. We show that the qualitative behaviour of the fluctuation of the metric conjectured by Wheeler is here reproduced.
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…
Recently some hidden inconsistencies in high energy physics and cosmology have been articulated by several scholars. If we follow the usual description we get an unacceptably high cosmological constant as was noticed by Weinberg and others…
The quantum field theory prediction of the cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude higher than the observed value. This is known as the cosmological constant problem. Here, we deal with the cosmological constant as a scalar field…
The cosmological constant problem is studied in a two component cosmological model. The universe contains a cosmological constant of an arbitrary size and sign and an additional component with an inhomogeneous equation of state. It is shown…
Continuing the investigation of the simplest cosmological model with the massive real scalar non-interacting inflaton field minimally coupled to gravity we study an influence of the cosmological constant on the behaviour of trajectories in…
The standard model of elementary particle physics and the theory of general relativity can be extended by the introduction of a vacuum variable which is responsible for the near vanishing of the present cosmological constant (vacuum energy…
In hep-th/0506040 we discussed a classically constrained model of gravity. This theory contains known solutions of General Relativity (GR), and admits solutions that are absent in GR. Here we study cosmological implications of some of these…
Quantum foam, also known as spacetime foam, has its origin in quantum fluctuations of spacetime. Its physics is intimately linked to that of black holes and computation. Arguably it is the source of the holographic principle which severely…
The incorporation of a small cosmological constant within radiatively-broken scale-invariant models is discussed. We show that phenomenologically consistent scale-invariant models can be constructed which allow a small positive cosmological…
We provide a comprehensive discussion of the Everpresent $\Lambda$ cosmological model arising from fundamental principles in causal set theory and unimodular gravity. In this framework the value of the cosmological constant ($\Lambda$)…
We argue that the cosmological constant is exponentially suppressed in a candidate ground state of loop quantum gravity as a nonperturbative effect of a holographic Fermi-liquid theory living on a two-dimensional spacetime. Ashtekar…
This is an essay sketching the line of thinking which has led the present author to propose the constituent or atomic model of gravitation more than a decade ago. It turns out that viewing the problem of gravitation as a quantum many body…
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 propose a phenomenological approach to the cosmological constant problem based on generally covariant non-local and acausal modifications of four-dimensional gravity at enormous distances. The effective Newton constant becomes very small…
Under the hypothesis that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
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 present a model that naturally tunes a large positive cosmological constant to a small cosmological constant. A slowly rolling scalar field decreases the cosmological constant to a small negative value, causing the universe to contract,…