Related papers: Everpresent Lambda
I review the problem of dark energy focusing on the cosmological constant as the candidate and discuss its implications for the nature of gravity. Part 1 briefly overviews the currently popular `concordance cosmology' and summarises the…
The Cosmological Constant $\Lambda$, in different incarnations, has been with us for 100 years. Many surveys of dark energy are underway, indicating so far that the data are consistent with a dark energy equation of state of $w=-1$, i.e. a…
Cosmology struggles with the theoretical problems generated by the observed value and recent emergence of a cosmological constant, in the standard model of cosmology, i.e. the concordance model. We propose to provide a more natural…
Astronomical observations indicate an accelerated cosmic expansion, the cause of which is explained by the action of `dark energy'. Here we show that in discrete expanding space-time, only a tiny fraction of the vacuum fluctuations can…
Observational data in cosmology indicate a small, positive, and nonvanishing cosmological constant that dominates the energy budget of the present universe. The origin of the cosmological constant from a quantum perspective remains…
It is extraordinary that a number of observations indicate that we live in a spatially flat, low matter density Universe, which is currently undergoing a period of accelerating expansion. The effort to explain this current state has focused…
Evidence for a positive cosmological constant $\Lambda$, derived from the Ly$\alpha$-forest in high-resolution spectra of quasars, leads to a closed, low-density, $\Lambda$-dominated universe. The analysis is based on the assumption of a…
We point out that the standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem itself is problematic since it is trying to apply the very large scale homogeneous cosmological model to very small (Planck) scale phenomenon. At small scales,…
It is widely believed that as one of the candidates for dark energy, the cosmological constant should relate directly with the quantum vacuum. Despite decades of theoretical effects, however, there is still no quantitative interpretation of…
We explore the effects of a positive cosmological constant on astrophysical and cosmological configurations described by a polytropic equation of state. We derive the conditions for equilibrium and stability of such configurations and…
The cosmological constant, which was introduced by Einstein a century ago to allow for a static universe, experienced a revival two decades ago under the label dark energy as a parameter to model the observed accelerated expansion of the…
The general thermodynamic analysis of the quantum vacuum, which is based on our knowledge of the vacua in condensed-matter systems, is consistent with the Einstein earlier view on the cosmological constant. In the equilibrium Universes the…
Dark energy in the universe is assumed to be vacuum energy. The energy-momentum of vacuum is described by a scale-dependent cosmological constant. The equations of motion imply for the density of matter (dust) the sum of the usual matter…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
We discuss a model of the universe where dark energy is replaced by electrically-charged extremely-massive dark matter. The cosmological constant has a value of the same order as the mean matter density, consistent with observations, and is…
Dynamical dark energy (DE) has been proposed to explain various aspects of the cosmological constant (CC) problem(s). For example, it is very difficult to accept that a strictly constant Lambda-term constitutes the ultimate explanation for…
Under the assumption that General Relativity (GR) correctly describes the phenomenology of our Universe, astronomical observations provide compelling evidence that (1) the dynamics of cosmic structure is dominated by dark matter (DM), an…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
A cosmology is considered driven by a stress-energy tensor consisting of a perfect fluid, an inhomogeneous pressure term (which we call a ``tachyonic dust'' for reasons which will become apparent) and a cosmological constant. The…
The cosmological constant is the most economical candidate for dark energy. No other approach really alleviates the difficulties faced by the cosmological constant because, in all other attempts to model the dark energy, one still has to…