Related papers: The Cosmological Constant
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…
New, large, ground and space telescopes are contributing to an exciting and rapid period of growth in observational cosmology. The subject is now far from its earlier days of being data-starved and unconstrained, and new data are fueling a…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
We have a well-established standard model for cosmology and prospects for considerable additions from work in progress. I offer a list of elements of the standard model, comments on controversies in the interpretation of the evidence in…
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…
We propose a time-varying cosmological constant with a fixed equation of state, which evolves mainly through its interaction with the background during most of the long history of the universe. However, such interaction does not exist in…
In this paper we consider the implications of a cosmological constant for the evolution of the universe, under a set of assumptions motivated by the holographic and horizon complementarity principles. We discuss the ``causal patch"…
The cosmological constant is one of the most pressing problems in modern physics. We address this issue from an emergent gravity standpoint, by using an analogue gravity model. Indeed, the dynamics of the emergent metric in a Bose-Einstein…
We have recently presented a manifestly local and general coordinate invariant formulation of a nonlocal approach to the cosmological constant problem which has been proposed by Carroll and Remmen. In this article, based on our formulation,…
Recent astrophysical observations seem to indicate that the cosmological constant is small but nonzero and positive. The old cosmological constant problem asks why it is so small; we must now ask, in addition, why it is nonzero (and is in…
This article reviews the arguments why extra dimensions provide a unique opportunity for progress on the cosmological constant problem, and updates the status of -- and the objections to (with replies) -- the specific proposal using…
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…
It is well-known that in unimodular gravity the cosmological constant is not sourced by a constant energy density, but rather appears as some sort of integration constant. In this work we try to flesh this out by studying in some detail a…
We introduce the notion of the cosmic numbers of a cosmological model, and discuss how they can be used to naturally classify models according to their ability to solve some of the problems of the standard cosmological model.
The fluctuations of the vacuum energy are treated as a non-equilibrium process and a stochastic model for the cosmological constant is presented, which yields a natural explanation for the smallness or zero value of the constant in the…
In a quest to explain the small value of the today's cosmological constant, following the approach introduced in [1], we show that the theoretical value of cosmological constant is consistent with its observational value. In more detail, we…
We review cosmological relativity, a new special theory of relativity that was recently developed for cosmology, and discuss in detail some of its aspects.
Recent results indicate the presence of a cosmological constant (or related dark energy) in the universe. It has been conjectured recently that the interaction parameters of physical theories may be dependant on the size parameter of the…
Anthropic models can give testable predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified at a specified confidence level. This is illustrated using the successful prediction of the cosmological constant as an example. The history and the nature…
In the light of the proposal of hep-th/0207195, we discuss in detail the issue of the cosmological constant, explaining how can string theory naturally predict the value which is experimentally observed, without low-energy supersymmetry.