Related papers: The Cosmological Constant From The Viewpoint Of St…
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…
It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the…
The two major goals in fundamental physics are: 1) Unification of all forces incorporating relativity and quantum theory, 2) Understanding the origin and evolution of the Universe as well as explaining the smallness of the cosmological…
We argue that in the context of string theory a large number N of connected degenerate vacua that mix will lead to a ground state with much lower energy, essentially because of the standard level repulsion of quantum theory for the…
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…
According to general relativity, the present analysis shows on geometrical grounds that the cosmological constant problem is an artifact due to the unfounded link of this fundamental constant to vacuum energy density of quantum…
One hope to solve the cosmological constant problem is to identify a symmetry principle, based on which the cosmological constant can be reduced either to zero, or to a tiny value. Here, we note that requiring that the vacuum state is…
We propose an approach to explaining why naive large quantum fluctuations are not the right estimate for the cosmological constant. We argue that the universe is in a superposition of many vacua, in such a way that the resulting…
There are now two cosmological constant problems: (i) why the vacuum energy is so small and (ii) why it comes to dominate at about the epoch of galaxy formation. Anthropic selection appears to be the only approach that can naturally resolve…
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…
The paper aims to provide an explanation for the tiny value of the cosmological constant and the low vacuum energy density to represent the dark energy. To accomplish this, we will search for a fundamental principle of symmetry in…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
We argue that traditional methods of compactification of string theory make it very difficult to understand how the cosmological constant becomes zero. String inspired models can give zero cosmological constant after fine tuning but since…
The principles of General Relativity allow for a non-vanishing cosmological constant, which can possibly be interpreted at least partially in terms of quantum-fluctuations of matter fields. Depending on sign and magnitude it can cause…
We construct a vacuum of string theory in which the magnitude of the vacuum energy is $< 10^{-123}$ in Planck units. Regrettably, the sign of the vacuum energy is negative, and some supersymmetry remains unbroken.
The cosmological constant problem is one of the greatest challenges in contemporary physics, since it is deeply rooted in the problematic interplay between quantum fields and gravity. The aim of this work is to review the key conceptual…
The cosmological constant, i.e., the energy density stored in the true vacuum state of all existing fields in the Universe, is the simplest and the most natural possibility to describe the current cosmic acceleration. However, despite its…
In this essay, we present a new understanding of the cosmological constant problem, built upon the realization that the vacuum energy density can be expressed in terms of a phase space volume. We introduce a UV-IR regularization which…
Under the hypothesis 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…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…