Related papers: The cosmological constant as a boundary term
Unimodular relativity is a theory of gravity and space-time with a fixed absolute space-time volume element, the modulus, which we suppose is proportional to the number of microscopic modules in that volume element. In general relativity an…
Classically, unimodular gravity is known to be equivalent to General Relativity (GR), except for the fact that the effective cosmological constant $\Lambda$ has the status of an integration constant. Here, we explore various formulations of…
A quantization of unimodular gravity is described, which results in a quantum effective action which is also unimodular, ie a function of a metric with fixed determinant. A consequence is that contributions to the energy momentum tensor of…
The cosmological constant problem represents a profound conflict between quantum field theory and general relativity. Unimodular gravity offers a compelling starting point by de-gravitating the vacuum energy of the Standard Model, but this…
A cosmological time variable is emerged from the hamiltonian formulation of unimodular theory of gravity to measure the evolution of dynamical observables in the theory. A set of constants of motion has been identified for the theory on the…
It is shown that the one-loop effective action of unimodular gravity is the same as that of ordinary gravity, restricted to unimodular metrics. The only difference is in the treatment of the global scale degree of freedom and of the…
We review selected aspects of unimodular gravity and we discuss its viability as a solution of the old cosmological constant problem. In unimodular gravity the cosmological constant is promoted to a global degree of freedom. We highlight…
We present a quantization of unimodular gravity in the connection representation for a homogeneous, isotropic, and spatially flat cosmological model without matter. In this model, the wave function is governed by a Schr\"odinger-type…
Unimodular Gravity is an alternative to General Relativity (GR) which, however, is so closely related to the latter that one can wonder to what extent they are different. The different behavior of the cosmological constant in the…
Unimodular gravity is based on a modification of the usual Einstein-Hilbert action that allows one to recover general relativity with a dynamical cosmological constant. It also has the interesting property of providing, as the momentum…
We investigate path integral quantization of two versions of unimodular gravity. First a fully diffeomorphism-invariant theory is analyzed, which does not include a unimodular condition on the metric, while still being equivalent to other…
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…
Unimodular gravity is characterized by an extra condition with respect to General Relativity: the determinant of the metric is constant. This extra condition leads to a more restricted class of invariance by coordinate transformation. Even…
The so-called unimodular version of General Relativity is revisited. Unimodular gravity is constructed by fixing the determinant of the metric, what leads to the trace-free part of the equations instead of the usual Einstein field…
Unimodular gravity addresses the old cosmological constant (CC) problem, explaining why such constant is not at least as large as the largest particle mass scale, but classically it is indistinguishable from ordinary gravity. Conversely,…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
A thorough study and analysis on the conceptual foundations of unimodular gravity shows that this theory is essentially general relativity disguised as unimodular relativity in the literature. The main reason for this dilemma is accepting…
The quantization of Einstein-Maxwell theory with a cosmological constant is considered. We obtain all logarithmically divergent terms in the one-loop effective action that involve only the background electromagnetic field. This includes…
Unimodular gravity is an interesting approach to address the cosmological constant problem, since the vacuum energy density of quantum fields does not gravitate in this framework, and the cosmological constant appears as an integration…
We discuss unimodular gravity at a classical level, and in terms of its extension into the UV through an appropriate path integral representation. Classically, unimodular gravity is simply a gauge fixed version of General Relativity (GR),…