Related papers: Nucleosynthesis bounds on a time-varying cosmologi…
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…
We study some cosmological constraints on the two phenomenological models of oscillating dark energy. In these scenarios, the equation of state of dark energy varies periodically and may provide a way to unify the early acceleration…
Based on some observations, the apparent energy, associated with gravity, of vacuums is defined, with that of normal vacuums to be zero and that of the vacuums losing some energy to be negative. An important application of the energy is its…
In the standard hot big bang model, the expansion of the early universe is given by the Friedmann equation with an energy density dominated by relativistic particles. Since in a variety of models this equation is altered, we introduce…
The energy density of the universe today may be dominated by the vacuum energy of a slowly rolling scalar field. Making a quantum expansion around such a time dependent solution is found to break fundamental symmetries of quantum field…
The idea that the vacuum energy density $\rho_{\Lambda}$ could be time dependent is a most reasonable one in the expanding Universe; in fact, much more reasonable than just a rigid cosmological constant for the entire cosmic history. Being…
The consideration of dark energy's quanta, required also by thermodynamics, introduces its chemical potential into the cosmological equations. Isolating its main contribution, we obtain solutions with dark energy decaying to matter or…
We reconsider constraints on Brans-Dicke theories arising from the requirement of successful Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Such constraints typically arise by imposing that the universe be radiation-dominated at early times, and therefore…
There are well-known bounds on light neutrino masses from cosmological energy density arguments. These arguments assume the neutrinos to be non-degenerate. We show how these bounds are affected if the neutrinos are degenerate. In this case,…
We investigate the evolution of a universe with a decaying cosmological term (vacuum energy) that is assumed to be a function of the scale factor. In this model, while the cosmological term increases to the early universe, the radiation…
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,…
The lower limit on the age of the universe derived from globular cluster dating techniques, which previously strongly motivated a non-zero cosmological constant, has now been dramatically reduced, allowing consistency for a flat matter…
We consider a cosmology with decaying metastable dark energy and assume that a decay process of this metastable dark energy is a quantum decay process. Such an assumption implies among others that the evolution of the Universe is…
We present a case for Cosmological Nucleosynthesis in an FRW universe in which the scale factor expands linearly with time: $a(t) \sim t$. It is demonstrated that adequate amount of $^4He$ requires a baryon density that saturates mass…
Recently there have been claims on model-independent evidence of dynamical dark energy. Herein we consider a fairly general class of cosmological models with a time-evolving cosmological term of the form $\Lambda(H)=C_0+C_H H^2+C_{\dot{H}}…
In a recent article, a simple `spherical bubble' toy model for a spatially varying vacuum energy density was introduced, and type Ia supernovae data was used to constrain it. Here we generalize the model to allow for the fact that we may…
In this article I study how the problem of time of canonical approaches to quantum gravity affects the simple minisuperspace models used in quantum cosmology. I follow some authors who have argued that this issue makes the quantization of…
We derive constraints on the time variation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value $<\phi>$ through the effects on Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In the former case, we include the…
We discuss some of the cosmological constraints on the evolution and persistence of life in the Universe and in hypothetical universes other than our own. We highlight the role played by the age and size of the universe, and discuss the…
We describe a link between the cosmological constant problem and the problem of time in quantum gravity. This arises by examining the relationship between the cosmological constant and vacuum energy in light of non-perturbative formulations…