Related papers: How natural is a small but nonzero cosmological co…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
We propose a paradigm for the inflation and the vanishing cosmological constant in a unified way with the self-tuning solutions of the cosmological constant problem. Here, we consider a time-varying cosmological constant in self-tuning…
The cosmological constant problem is studied in a two component cosmological model. The universe contains a cosmological constant of an arbitrary size and sign and an additional component with an inhomogeneous equation of state. It is shown…
We propose to reinterpret Einstein's field equations as a nonlinear eigenvalue problem, where the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ plays the role of the (smallest) eigenvalue. This interpretation is fully worked out for a simple model of…
We propose a novel explanation for the smallness of the observed cosmological constant (CC). Regions of space with a large CC are short lived and are dynamically driven to crunch soon after the end of inflation. Conversely, regions with a…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance physics, corresponding to an energy at least as large as the Fermi scale. The…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
The shift-symmetric coupling of a pseudo-scalar particle driving inflation to gauge fields provides a unique way of probing cosmic inflation. We show for an SU(2) gauge group how a classical isotropic background gauge field develops from…
Treating the gravitational field as a dynamical field, we study the spontaneous symmetry breaking induced by a scalar field under its self-interaction and non-minimal interaction with gravity in four dimensional space-time. In particular,…
One way that an anthropic selection mechanism may be manifest in a physical theory involves multiple domains in the universe with different values of the physical parameters. If this mechanism is to be relevant for understanding the small…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics, mass scales are generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant $R^2$ gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated by a scalar field, which…
The astronomically observed value of the cosmological constant is small but non-zero. This raises two questions together known as the cosmological constant problem a) why is lambda so nearly zero? b) why is lambda not EXACTLY zero? Sorkin…
We present a simple, exact and self-consistent cosmology with a phenomenological model of quantum creation of radiation due to decay of the scalar field. The decay drives a non-isentropic inflationary epoch, which exits smoothly to the…
Various contributions to the cosmological constant are discussed and confronted with its recent measurement. We briefly review different scenarious -- and their difficulties -- for a solution of the cosmological constant problem.
This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability of inflation or…
We show that a tiny but non-zero positive cosmological constant, which has been strongly suggested by the recent astronomical observations on supernovae and CMBR, may change notably the behaviors of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray…
We suggest that the (small but nonvanishing) cosmological constant, and the holographic properties of gravitational entropy, may both reflect unconventional quantum spin-statistics at a fundamental level. This conjecture is motivated by the…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…