Related papers: Empty space and the (positive) cosmological consta…
We study a uniform and isotropic cosmology with a decaying vacuum energy density, in the realm of a model with a time varying gravitational "constant". We show that, for late times, such a cosmology is in accordance with the observed values…
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 accelerating expansion of the Universe points to a small positive vacuum energy density and negative vacuum pressure. A strong candidate is the cosmological constant in Einstein's equations of General Relativity. The vacuum dark energy…
A solution of the vacuum Einstein equations with a cosmological constant is exhibited which can perhaps be used to describe the interior of compact rotating objects, and may also provide a description of our universe on length scales…
In this article the cosmological constant problems, as well as the astronomical evidence for a cosmologically significant homogeneous exotic energy density with negative pressure (quintessence), are reviewed for a broad audience of…
The physical world is quantum. However, our description of the quantum physics still relies much on concepts in classical physics and in some cases with `quantized' interpretations. The most important case example is that of spacetime. We…
Cosmology might turn out to be the study of fluctuations around a "de Sitter equilibrium" state. In this article I review the basic ideas and the attractive features of this framework, and respond to a number common questions raised about…
For almost a century, the cosmological constant has been a mysterious object, in relation to both its origin and its very small value. By using a Bose-Einstein condensate analogue model for gravitational dynamics, we address here the…
We point out a potential relevance between the Krein-Gupta-Bleuler (KGB) vacuum leading to a fully covariant quantum field theory for gravity in de Sitter (dS) spacetime and the observable smallness of the cosmological constant. This may…
There is now strong evidence that the main contribution to the cosmic energy density is not due to matter, but to another component with negative pressure. Its nature is still unknown: it could be the vacuum energy, manifesting itself as a…
We study gravitational theories with a cosmological constant and the Gauss-Bonnet curvature squared term and analyze the possibility of de Sitter expanding spacetime with a constant internal space. We find that there are two branches of the…
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…
The fluctuations of the vacuum energy are treated as a non-equilibrium process and a stochastic model for the cosmological constant is presented, which yields a natural explanation for the smallness or zero value of the constant in the…
In theories of gravity with a positive cosmological constant, we consider product solutions with flux, of the form (A)dS_p x S^q. Most solutions are shown to be perturbatively unstable, including all uncharged dS_p x S^q spacetimes. For…
The one-loop effective action for non-minimal scalar modified gravity on de Sitter background with a constant scalar field is found. The corresponding induced cosmological constant is evaluated. It is shown that quantum effects in…
An speculative solution for the cosmological constant problem is proposed. It is argued that while the true quantum vacuum energy density is of the order of $M_P^4$, the observed classical vacuum energy density may be much smaller due to…
Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one (time) dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantised, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum…
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 propose a new approach to understand hierarchy problem for cosmological constant in terms of considering noncommutative nature of space-time. We calculate that vacuum energy density of the noncommutative quantum field theories in…
In three dimensions, Kerr-de Sitter spacetime as a solution of Einstein gravity with positive cosmological constant has a single cosmological horizon. The flat-space limit (zero cosmological constant limit) of this spacetime is well-defined…