Related papers: The old problem of the cosmological constant solve…
This is an essay sketching the line of thinking which has led the present author to propose the constituent or atomic model of gravitation more than a decade ago. It turns out that viewing the problem of gravitation as a quantum many body…
The cosmological constant problem is principally concerned with trying to understand how the zero-point energy of quantum fields contributes to gravity. Here we take the approach that by addressing a fundamental unresolved issue in quantum…
A cosmology inspired structure for phase space is introduced, which leads to finitization and lattice-like discretization of position and momentum eigenvalues in a preferred, cosmic frame. Lorentz invariance is broken at very high energies,…
We trace the origin of the cosmological constant problem to the assumption that Newton's constant $G$ sets the scale for cosmology. And then we show that once this assumption is relaxed, the very same cosmic acceleration which has served to…
We address issues on the origin of gravity and the cosmological constant problem based on a recent understanding about the correspondence between noncommutative field theory and gravity. We suggest that the cosmological constant problem can…
We review a few off-the-beaten-track ideas in cosmology. They solve a variety of fundamental problems; also they are fun. We start with a description of non-singular dilaton cosmology. In these scenarios gravity is modified so that the…
Normalizing the Einstein-Hilbert action by the volume functional makes the theory invariant under constant shifts in the Lagrangian. The associated field equations then resemble unimodular gravity whose otherwise arbitrary cosmological…
We briefly discuss new models of an `affine' theory of gravity in multidimensional space-times with symmetric connections. We use and generalize Einstein's proposal to specify the space-time geometry by use of the Hamilton principle to…
We consider two-dimensional quantum gravity endowed with a positive cosmological constant and coupled to a conformal field theory of large and positive central charge. We study cosmological properties at the classical and quantum level. We…
A new model of oscillators was suggested, in which an oscillating particle in the minimum energy state has a nonzero velocity. A system consisting of a point material particle and a scalar field described by the nonlinear Klein-Gordon…
Taking the quantization of electromagnetism as the paradigm, we show how this procedure cannot work for Einstein gravity. However, it does work for conformal gravity, a fourth-order derivative, renormalizable theory of gravity that Bender…
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…
It is an old speculation in physics that, once the gravitational field is successfully quantized, it should serve as the natural regulator of infrared and ultraviolet singularities that plague quantum field theories in a background metric.…
With the discovery of gravitational waves, the search for the quantum of gravity, the graviton, is imminent. We discuss the current status of the bounds on graviton mass from experiments as well as the theoretical understanding of these…
Solutions to a scalar-tensor (dilaton) quantum gravity theory, interacting with quantized matter, are described. Dirac quantization is frustrated by quantal anomalies in the constraint algebra. Progress is made only after the…
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 work shows that the associated Einstein like gravity for the Klein-Gordon field shows the spontaneous emergence of the cosmological pressure tensor density (CPTD) that in the classical limit leads to the cosmological constant (CC). Even…
The problem of finding the quantum theory of the gravitational field, and thus understanding what is quantum spacetime, is still open. One of the most active of the current approaches is loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity is a…
Cosmological solutions for covariant canonical gauge theories of gravity are presented. The underlying covariant canonical transformation framework invokes a dynamical space-time Hamiltonian consisting of the Einstein-Hilbert term plus a…
Based on the assertion that the cosmological constant problem is essentially a quantum gravity problem, the framework which addresses the cosmological constant problem should also bear a picture for the ``quantum space-time''. In this talk…