Related papers: Counter-intuition and Scalar Masses
The recently suggested notion of total mass density for closed universes is extended to closed universes with a positive cosmological constant. Assuming that the matter fields satisfy the dominant energy condition, it is shown that the…
We point out that the standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem itself is problematic since it is trying to apply the very large scale homogeneous cosmological model to very small (Planck) scale phenomenon. At small scales,…
We show how the scalar field, a candidate of quintessence, in a proposed model of the scalar-tensor theories of gravity provides a way to understand a small but nonzero cosmological constant as indicated by recent observations. A particular…
We suggest a new cosmological scenario which naturally guarantees the smallness of scalar masses and VEVs, without invoking supersymmetry or any other (non-gravitationaly coupled) new physics at low energies. In our framework, the scalar…
We study both the cosmological self-tuning and the local predictions (inside the Solar system) of the most general shift-symmetric beyond Horndeski theory. We first show that the cosmological self-tuning is generic in this class of…
The cosmological constant problem is a failure of naturalness and suggests that a fine-tuning mechanism is at work, which may also address the hierarchy problem. An example -- supported by Weinberg's successful prediction of the…
We exhibit a mechanism which dynamically adjusts cosmological constant toward $0^+$. The adjustment is quantum-mechanical, discharging cosmological constant in random discrete steps. It renders de Sitter space unstable, and triggers its…
It is well known that string theories naturally compactify on anti-de Sitter spaces, and yet cosmological observations show no evidence of a negative cosmological constant in the early Universe's evolution. In this letter we present two…
We start with a brief account of the latest analysis of the Oklo phenomenon providing the still most stringent constraint on time-variability of the fine- structure constant $\alpha$. Comparing this with the recent result from the…
For a large region of parameter space involving the cosmological constant and mass parameters, we discuss fluctuating spacetime solutions that are effectively Minkowskian on large time and distance scales. Rapid, small amplitude…
We show that in the framework of the classical general relativity the presence of a positive cosmological constant implies the existence of a minimal mass and of a minimal density in nature. These results rigorously follow from the…
We review matter bounce scenarios where the matter content is dark matter and dark energy. These cosmologies predict a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum with a slightly red tilt for scalar perturbations and a small tensor-to-scalar…
The discovery of a Higgs boson at the electroweak scale appears to point toward supersymmetry, as the most likely mechanism for protecting a scalar boson mass from enormous radiative corrections. The earlier discovery of neutrino masses…
Recent analyses combining cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) challenge particle physics constraints on the total neutrino mass, pointing to values smaller than the lower limit from neutrino oscillation…
We argue that, when a theory of gravity and matter is endowed with (classical) conformal symmetry, the fine tuning required to obtain the cosmological constant at its observed value can be significantly reduced. Once tuned, the cosmological…
The energy density of the universe today may be dominated by the vacuum energy of a slowly rolling scalar field. Making a quantum expansion around such a time dependent solution is found to break fundamental symmetries of quantum field…
We carry out a Bayesian model selection analysis of different dark energy parametrizations using the recent luminosity distance data of high redshift supernovae from Riess et al. 2007 and from the new ESSENCE Supernova Survey. Including…
We show that a mass-varying neutrino model driven by scalar field dark energy relaxes the existing upper bound on the current neutrino mass to ${\sum m_\nu < 0.72}$ eV. We extend the standard $\Lambda$ cold dark matter model by introducing…
We discuss a mechanism which generates a mass term for a scalar field in an expanding universe. The mass of this field turns out to be generated by the cosmological constant and can be naturally small if protected by a conformal symmetry…
Standard cosmological weak lensing analyses using cosmic shear are inevitably sensitive to small-scale, non-linear clustering from low-redshift structures. The need to adequately model the clustering of matter on this non-linear regime,…