Related papers: The fate of four dimensions
We show that, in the presence of a string gas, simple higher-derivative modifications to the effective action for gravity can lead to bouncing and cyclic cosmological models. The modifications bound the expansion rate and avoid…
To explain the currently observed accelerated expansion of the universe, a large number of different theoretical models are presently being discussed. In one way or another, all of these contain `new physics', though at different levels.…
The behavior of the gravitating vacuum energy density in an expanding universe is discussed. A scenario is presented with a step-wise relaxation of the vacuum energy density. The vacuum energy density moves from plateau to plateau and…
We examine some novel physical consequences of the general structure of moduli spaces of string vacua. These include (1) finiteness of the volume of the moduli space and (2) chaotic motion of the moduli in the early universe. To fix ideas…
The universe may have extra spatial dimensions with large volume that we cannot perceive because the energy required to excite modes in the extra directions is too high. Many examples are known of such manifolds with a large volume and a…
The Stringy Uncertainty relations, and corrections thereof, were explicitly derived recently from the New Relativity Principle that treats all dimensions and signatures on the same footing and which is based on the postulate that the Planck…
Starting from a five-dimensional (5D) vacuum theory of gravity where the extra coordinate is considered as noncompact, we investigate the possibility of inducing four-dimensional (4D) phantom scenarios by applying form-invariance symmetry…
String theory suggests modifications of our spacetime such as extra dimensions and the existence of a mininal length scale. In models with addidional dimensions, the Planck scale can be lowered to values accessible by future colliders.…
The macroscopic dimensions of space should not be input but rather output of a general model for physics. Here, dimensionality arises from a recently discovered mathematical bifurcation: positive versus indefinite manifold pairings. It is…
Three subjects are considered here: a self-dual non-critical string that appears in Type IIB superstring theory at points in ${\rm K3}$ moduli space where the Type IIA theory has extended gauge symmetry; a conformal field theory singularity…
We discuss two scenarios of emergent gravity. In one of them the quantum vacuum is considered as superplastic crystal, and the effective gravity describes the dynamical elastic deformations of this crystal. In the other one the…
New singularity theorems are derived for generic warped-product spacetimes of any dimension. The main purpose is to analyze the stability of (compact or large) extra dimensions against dynamical perturbations. To that end, the base of the…
We suggest the possibility that the mysterious dark energy component driving the acceleration of the Universe is the leading term, in the de Sitter temperature, of the free energy density of space-time seen as a quantum gravity coherent…
Increasing astronomical evidence indicates that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. By simply solving Einstein equations we show in this letter that a wide class of generic quintessence models leading to eternal acceleration is…
Dynamical vacuum energy or quintessence, a slowly varying and spatially inhomogeneous component of the energy density with negative pressure, is currently consistent with the observational data. One potential difficulty with the idea of…
We study the cosmological evolution of a type-0 string theory by employing non-criticality, which may be induced by fluctuations of the D3 brane worlds. We check the consistency of the approach to O(alpha ') in the corresponding…
Some time ago we have suggested that positive vacuum energy exhibits a finite quantum break time, which can be a signal that a positive cosmological constant is inconsistent. From the requirement that Universe never undergoes through…
General relativity becomes vastly simpler in three spacetime dimensions: all vacuum solutions have constant curvature, and the moduli space of solutions can be almost completely characterized. As a result, this lower dimensional setting…
The {\em instability of vacuum energy} in de Sitter space as discussed recently by Polyakov is argued to be a generic feature when external gravitational fields are present. It is related to the existence of {\em forbidden} (by momentum…
We review a solution of the cosmological constant problem in a brane-world model with infinite-volume extra dimensions. The solution is based on a nonlinear generally covariant theory of a metastable graviton that leads to a large-distance…