Related papers: Revealing A Trans-Planckian World Solves The Cosmo…
It has been proposed that the geometry of an extra dimension could automatically adjust itself to compensate for an arbitrary energy density on the 3-D brane which we are presumed to inhabit, such that a static solution to Einstein's…
In Weinberg's asymptotic safety approach, a finite dimensional critical surface for a UV stable fixed point generates a theory of quantum gravity with a finite number of physical parameters. We argue that, in an extension of Feynman's…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
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…
Motivated by the conjecture that the cosmological constant problem is solved by strong quantum effects in the infrared we use the exact flow equation of Quantum Einstein Gravity to determine the renormalization group behavior of a class of…
Theories of the cosmological constant fall into two classes, those in which the vacuum energy is fixed by the fundamental theory and those in which it is adjustable in some way. For each class we discuss key challenges. The string theory…
We first give simple arguments in favor of the "Zero Constants Party", i.e. that quantum theory should not contain fundamental dimensionful constants at all. Then we argue that quantum theory should proceed not from a space-time background…
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…
The typical scalar field theory has a cosmological constant problem. We propose a generic mechanism by which this problem is avoided at tree level by embedding the theory into a larger theory. The metric and the scalar field coupling…
A quantum field theory formalism is reviewed that leads to a self-consistent, finite quantum gravity, Yang-Mills and Higgs theory, which is unitary and gauge invariant to all orders of perturbation theory. The gauge hierarchy problem is…
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…
A scenario based on the scale invariance for explaining the vanishing cosmological constant (CC) is discussed. I begin with a notice on the miraculous fact of the CC problem that the vacuum energies totally vanish at each step of…
We propose that at the beginning of the universe gravity existed in a limbo either because it was switched off or because it was only conformally coupled to all particles. This picture can be reverse-engineered from the requirement that the…
The study of physics at the Planck scale has garnered significant attention due to its implications for understanding the fundamental nature of the universe. At the Planck scale, quantum fluctuations challenge the classical notion of…
Brane worlds are theories with extra spatial dimensions in which ordinary matter is localized on a (3+1) dimensional submanifold. Such theories could have interesting consequences for particle physics and gravitational physics. In this…
Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantized, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum…
Quantum liquids, in which an effective Lorentzian metric and thus some kind of gravity gradually arise in the low-energy corner, are the objects where the problems related to the quantum vacuum can be investigated in detail. In particular,…
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 a solution to the cosmological constant, the zero-point energy, and the quantum gravity problems within a single comprehensive framework. We show that in quantum theories of gravity in which the zero-point energy density of the…
We consider general relativity with a cosmological constant as a perturbative expansion around a completely solvable diffeomorphism invariant field theory. This theory is the $\Lambda\to\infty$ limit of general relativity. This allows an…