Related papers: The cosmological constant is probably still zero
We advance the viewpoint that only relevant modes of the vacuum fluctuations, namely, with wavelengths conditioned by the size, homogeneity, geometry and topology of the Universe, do contribute into the cosmological constant. A formula is…
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 model with an infinite volume bulk in which a braneworld with a cosmological constant evolves to a static, 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. This evolution occurs for a generic class of initial conditions with positive energy…
We suggest a model of induced gravity in which the fundamental object is a relativistic {\it membrane} minimally coupled to a background metric and to an external three index gauge potential. We compute the low energy limit of the two-loop…
General covariant unimodular gravity frameworks, based on the Henneaux-Teitelboim formulation, are, in disguise, precisely $4$-form field theories corrected with higher dimension operators. In the presence of charged tensional membranes,…
The cosmological constant, i.e., the energy density stored in the true vacuum state of all existing fields in the Universe, is the simplest and the most natural possibility to describe the current cosmic acceleration. However, despite its…
Anthropic solutions to the cosmological constant problem require seemingly unnatural scalar field potentials with a very small slope or domain walls (branes) with a very small coupling to a four-form field. Here we introduce a class of…
We propose several covariant models which may solve one of the problems in the cosmological constant. One of the model can be regarded as an extension of sequestering model. Other models could be regarded as extensions of the covariant…
I describe an approach which connects classical gravity with the quantum microstructure of spacetime. The field equations arise from maximizing the density of states of matter plus geometry. The former is identified using the thermodynamics…
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…
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…
Theoretical and observational challenges to standard cosmology such as the cosmological constant problem and tensions between cosmological model parameters inferred from different observations motivate the development and search of new…
We investigate whether selfish/Goldilocks Higgs models can be extended to accomodate vacua with both the right Higgs mass and cosmological constant. Through the introduction of multiple four-form fields coupled with the Higgs scalar boson…
It was recently suggested that the cosmological constant problem as viewed in a non-perturbative framework is intimately connected to the choice of time and a physical Hamiltonian. We develop this idea further by calculating the…
The astronomically observed value of the cosmological constant is small but non-zero. This raises two questions together known as the cosmological constant problem a) why is lambda so nearly zero? b) why is lambda not EXACTLY zero? Sorkin…
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…
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…
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…
We study the computational complexity of the physical problem of finding vacua of string theory which agree with data, such as the cosmological constant, and show that such problems are typically NP hard. In particular, we prove that in the…
A model of topological field theory is presented in which the vacuum coupling constants are topological invariants of the four-dimensional spacetime. Thus the coupling constants are theoretically computable, and they indicate the…