Related papers: Cosmological constant in SUGRA models and the mult…
Based on a thoeretical model in which scalar fields play crucial roles, we propose a mechanism to better understand a cosmological constant expected to be small (nearly comparable with the critical density) but nonzero as suggested strongly…
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…
This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
We consider supersymmetry breaking models with a purely constant superpotential in supergravity. The supersymmetry breaking is induced for the vanishing cosmological constant. As a hidden mediation sector of supersymmetry breaking, it…
In supergravity models, the quantum correction to the vacuum energy can be of order $M_I^4$, if the cutoff is of order the Planck mass $M^2_{P}$ and $Str\ {\cal M}^2\ne 0$. Therefore, the tree level cosmological constant must be nonzero…
In spontaneously broken supergravity with non-flat potential the vanishing of the cosmological constant is usually associated with a non-trivial balancing of two opposite-sign contributions. We make the simple observation that, in an…
Motivated by recent work of Bousso and Polchinski (BP), we study theories which explain the small value of the cosmological constant using the anthropic principle. We argue that simultaneous solution of the gauge hierarchy problem is a…
The author proposed in his previous papers in 2001 that the problem of the cosmological constant could be resolved and its calculated value agrees excellently with the observations by assuming that the space-time itself, as the phase of…
Supernovae observations strongly support the presence of a cosmological constant, but its value, which we will call apparent, is normally determined assuming that the universe can be accurately described by a homogeneous model. Even in the…
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…
There is a deep cosmological mystery: although dependent on very different underlying physics, the timescales of structure formation, of galaxy cooling (both radiatively and against the CMB), and of vacuum domination do not differ by many…
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…
I review the phenomenological and cosmological constraints on the parameter space associated with the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM). The effect of the recent WMAP determination of the cold dark matter density…
We work out the phenomenology of a model of supersymmetry breaking in the presence of a tiny (tunable) positive cosmological constant, proposed by the authors in arXiv:1403.1534. It utilises a single chiral multiplet with a gauged shift…
We consider the properties of an ensemble of universes as function of size, where size is defined in terms of the asymptotic value of the Hubble constant (or, equivalently, the value of the cosmological constant). We assume that standard…
We outline a program with the potential to solve both the cosmological constant and quantum gravity problems within a single, comprehensive framework, one that is formulated entirely in four spacetime dimensions. The program is based on an…
There has been the suggestion that the cosmological constant as implied by the dark energy is related to the well-known hierarchy between the Planck scale, $M_{\rm Pl}$, and the Standard Model scale, $M_{\rm SM}$. Here we further propose…
We present a qualitatively new mechanism for dynamical spontaneous breakdown of supersymmetry. Specifically, we construct a modified formulation of standard minimal N=1 supergravity. The modification is based on an idea worked out in detail…
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…