Related papers: The Cosmological Constant Problem and Running Vacu…
The $\Lambda$-term in Einstein's equations is a fundamental building block of the `concordance' $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology. Even though the model is not free of fundamental problems, they have not been circumvented by any alternative…
The cosmological constant term (CC), $\Lambda$, is a pivotal ingredient in the standard model of cosmology or $\Lambda$CDM, but it is a rigid quantity for the entire cosmic history. This is unnatural and inconsistent. Different theoretical…
The cosmological term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's equations is an essential ingredient of the `concordance' $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology. In this mini-review presentation, we assess the possibility that $\Lambda$ can be a dynamical…
Recent studies of quantum field theory in FLRW spacetime suggest that the cause of the speeding up of the universe is the running vacuum (RV). Appropriate renormalization of the energy-momentum tensor shows that the vacuum energy density is…
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'…
Phenomenological work in the last few years has provided significant support to the idea that the vacuum energy density (VED) is a running quantity with the cosmological evolution and that this running helps to alleviate the cosmological…
The cosmological constant term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's equations has been for three decades a building block of the concordance or standard $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology. Although the latter is not free of fundamental problems, it…
Next year we will celebrate 100 years of the cosmological term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's gravitational field equations, also 50 years since the cosmological constant problem was first formulated by Zeldovich, and almost about two decades of…
I argue that a solution to the cosmological constant problem is to assume that the expectation value of the quantum vacuum stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric tensor with a negative energy density and positive pressure. This…
The renormalization of the vacuum energy in quantum field theory (QFT) is usually plagued with theoretical conundrums related not only with the renormalization procedure itself, but also with the fact that the final result leads usually to…
Despite the many outstanding cosmological observations leading to a strong evidence for a nonvanishing cosmological constant (CC) term in the gravitational field equations, the theoretical status of this quantity seems to be lagging well…
It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
The possibility that the vacuum energy density (VED), $\rho_{\rm vac}$, could be time dependent in the expanding Universe is intuitively more reasonable than just a rigid cosmological constant for the entire cosmic history. The dynamics of…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
Recent studies of QFT in cosmological spacetime indicate that the speeding up of the present universe may not just be associated with a rigid cosmological term but with a running one that evolves with the expansion rate:…
I review the excellent phenomenological status of a class of dynamical vacuum models in which the vacuum energy density, $\rho_{\Lambda}=\rho_{\Lambda}(H)$, as a function of the Hubble rate, evolves through its interaction with dark matter…
In this year, in which we celebrate 100 years of the cosmological term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's gravitational field equations, we are still facing the crucial question whether $\Lambda$ is truly a fundamental constant or a mildly evolving…
The cosmological constant problem arises at the intersection between general relativity and quantum field theory, and is regarded as a fundamental problem in modern physics. In this paper we describe the historical and conceptual origin of…
Despite the fact that a rigid $\Lambda$-term is a fundamental building block of the concordance $\Lambda$CDM model, we show that a large class of cosmological scenarios with dynamical vacuum energy density $\rho_{\Lambda}$ and/or…