Related papers: Trace Anomaly, Perelman's Functionals and the Cosm…
We compute the running of the cosmological constant and Newton's constant taking into account the effect of quantum fields with any spin between 0 and 2. We find that Newton's constant does not vary appreciably but the cosmological constant…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
The cosmological constant problem is usually considered an inevitable feature of any effective theory capturing well-tested gravitational and matter physics, without regard to the details of short-distance gravitational couplings. In this…
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…
We consider the standard model with local scale invariance. The theory shows exact scale invariance of dimensionally regulated action. We show that massless gauge fields, which may be abelian or non-abelian, lead to vanishing contribution…
We introduce a dynamical model to reduce a large cosmological constant to a sufficiently small value. The basic ingredient in this model is a distinction which has been made between the two unit systems used in cosmology and particle…
It is well-known that quantum field theory (QFT) induces a huge value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, which is outrageously inconsistent with cosmological observations. We review here some aspects of this fundamental theoretical…
A class of diffeomorphism invariant, physical observables, so-called astrometric observables, is introduced. A particularly simple example, the time delay, which expresses the difference between two initially synchronized proper time clocks…
A general no-go theorem dampens hope that the cosmological constant problem can be solved by a local symmetry mechanism. The possibility is considered here that this no-go theorem can be avoided by a pseudo-symmetry. A simple macroscopic…
We study the decay of the cosmological constant in two spacetime dimensions through production of pairs. We show that the same nucleation process looks as quantum mechanical tunneling (instanton) to one Killing observer and as thermal…
We provide a consistency relation between cosmological observables in general relativity with the cosmological constant. Breaking of this relation at any redshift would imply the breakdown of the hypothesis of the cosmological constant as…
Under the assumption 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 discuss the derivation of the trace anomaly using a non-local effective action at one loop. This provides a simple and instructive form and emphasizes infrared physics. We then use this example to explore several of the properties of…
Physics in the vicinity of an ultraviolet stable fixed point of a quantum field theory is parametrized by a renormalization group invariant macroscopic length scale, the correlation length $\xi,$ with the quantum effective action a function…
We consider an effective field theory description of gravity coupled to a scalar field with volume-preserving diffeomorphism and Weyl invariances. The smallness of the cosmological constant is achieved when the potential of the scalar is…
The cosmological constant and its phenomenology remain among the greatest puzzles in theoretical physics. We review how modifications of Einstein's general relativity could alleviate the different problems associated with it that result…
This paper concerns the so-called cosmological constant problem. In order to solve it, we propose a toy model providing an extension of the dimensionality of spacetime, with an additional spatial dimension which is macroscopically…
The source of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe is still unknown. We examine some consequences of the possible scale invariance of the empty space at large scales. The central hypothesis of this work is that, at macroscopic…
We present the connection between the running of the cosmological constant and the estimate of its value in the resummed quantum gravity realization of quantum general relativity. We also address in this way some of the questions that have…
We consider further consequences of recently [1] revealed role of cosmological constant \Lambda as of a physical constant, along with the gravitational one to define the gravity i.e. the General Relativity and its low-energy limit. We now…