Related papers: Unimodular Quadratic Gravity and the Cosmological …
There are many theories of quantum gravity, depending on asymptotic boundary conditions, and the amount of supersymmetry. The cosmological constant is one of the fundamental parameters that characterize different theories. If it is…
We extend the usual gravitational action principle by promoting the bare cosmological constant (CC) from a parameter to a field which can take many possible values. Variation leads to a new integral constraint equation which determines the…
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…
In this paper, the G\"{o}del-type universes are examined within the framework of unimodular gravity. Since the existence of G\"{o}del solutions is intrinsically related to the presence of a cosmological constant in general relativity, one…
The Cosmological Constant Problem is re-examined from an effective field theory perspective. While the connection between gravity and particle physics has not been experimentally probed in the quantum regime, it is severely constrained by…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
It is well known that classical Unimodular Gravity (UG) is equivalent to General Relativity, but is not clear the equivalence at the quantum level. Here we exhibit, in the UG framework, the Quantum Cosmology (QC) for a…
The Cosmological Constant Problem emerges when Quantum Field Theory is applied to the gravitational theory, due to the enormous magnitude of the induced energy of the vacuum. The unique known solution of this problem involves an extremely…
We argue that, when a theory of gravity and matter is endowed with (classical) conformal symmetry, the fine tuning required to obtain the cosmological constant at its observed value can be significantly reduced. Once tuned, the cosmological…
We formally prove the existence of a quantization procedure that makes the path integral of a general diffeomorphism-invariant theory of gravity, with fixed total spacetime volume, equivalent to that of its unimodular version. This is…
According to theoretical physics the cosmological constant (CC) is expected to be much larger in magnitude than other energy densities in the universe, which is in stark contrast to the observed Big Bang evolution. We address this old CC…
Quantum gravity has matured over the last decade to a theory which can tell in a precise and explicit way how cosmological singularities of general relativity are removed. A branch of the universe "before" the classical big bang is obtained…
We study the role of the cosmological constant (CC) as a component of dark energy (DE). It is argued that the cosmological term is in general unavoidable and it should not be ignored even when dynamical DE sources are considered. From the…
We show that it is possible to solve the cosmological constant (CC) problem in a discrete quantum gravity theory based on Regge calculus by using the effective action approach and a special path-integral measure. The effective cosmological…
At present, there is practically no doubt that general relativity is closely related to gravity. Moreover, after the work of Jacobson, Padmanabhan and others, it became clear that a thermodynamic interpretation of Einstein's relativistic…
Unimodular gravity (UG) is an interesting theory that may explain why the cosmological constant is extremely small, in contrast to general relativity (GR). The theory has only the transverse diffeomorphism invariance and this causes lots of…
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…
We examine the general issue of whether a scale dependent cosmological constant can be consistent with general covariance, a problem that arises naturally in the treatment of quantum gravitation where coupling constants generally run as a…
Quantum gravity places entirely new challenges on the formulation of a consistent theory as well as on an extraction of potentially observable effects. Quantum corrections due to the gravitational field are commonly expected to be tiny…
The standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem is based on one critical assumption---the spacetime is homogeneous and isotropic, which is true only on cosmological scales. However, this problem is caused by extremely small…