Related papers: Issues on the cosmological constant
We regard the background of space-time as a physical system composed of discrete volume elements at the Planck scale and get the internal energy of space-time by Debye model. A temperature-dependent minimum energy limit of the particles is…
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…
A cosmological constant, Lambda, is the most natural candidate to explain the origin of the dark energy (DE) component in the Universe. However, due to experimental evidence that the equation of state (EOS) of the DE could be evolving with…
Recently, the observed equation of state for dark energy appears to favor values below $-1$. The tendency implies that the nature of dark energy may be quite different from that of the cosmological constant. In view of the adjustment on the…
In this article the cosmological constant problems, as well as the astronomical evidence for a cosmologically significant homogeneous exotic energy density with negative pressure (quintessence), are reviewed for a broad audience of…
Recent data advances offer the exciting prospect of a first look at whether dark energy has a dynamical equation of state or not. While formally theories exist with a constant equation of state, they are nongeneric -- Einstein's…
The cosmological constant problem is the principal obstacle in the attempt to interpret dark energy as the quantum vacuum energy. We suggest that the obstacle can be removed, i.e. that the cosmological constant problem can be resolved by…
A variety of observations indicate that the universe is dominated by dark energy with negative pressure, one possibility for which is a cosmological constant. If the dark energy is a cosmological constant, a fundamental question is: Why has…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
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…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
I briefly review our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. The first part of this paper focusses on issues pertaining to dark matter including observational evidence for its existence, current constraints and the `abundance…
One of the most fundamental questions in cosmology is if dark energy is related just to a constant or it is something more complex. In this work, we call the attention to the fact that, under very general conditions, dark energy can be…
Recent measurements suggest our universe has a substantial dark energy component, which is usually interpreted in terms of a cosmological constant. Here we examine how much the form of this dark energy can be modified while still retaining…
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…
In this talk we present a model of the universe in which dark energy is modelled explicitely with both a dynamical quintessence field and a cosmological constant. Our results confirm the possibility of a collapsing universe (for a given…
Associated with the cosmic acceleration are the old and new cosmological constant problems, recently put into the more general context of the dark energy problem. In broad terms, the old problem is related to an unexpected order of…
Dark energy is one of the mysteries of modern science. It is unlike any known form of matter or energy and has been detected so far only by its gravitational effect of repulsion. Owing to its effects being discernible only at very very…
The smallness of the cosmological constant is one of the basic problems in particle physics and cosmology. Various attempts have been made to explain this mystery, but no satisfactory solution has been found yet. The appearance of extra…
We discuss models that can account for today's dark energy. The underlying cosmological constant may be Planck scale but starts as a redundant coupling which can be eliminated by a field redefinition. The observed vacuum energy arises when…