Related papers: Counter-intuition and Scalar Masses
Loop quantization of Schwarzschild black holes with a cosmological constant for polymerization parameters which are constant is studied in the effective spacetime description. We show that for the positive cosmological constant there can be…
By compactifying a critical bosonic string theory on an internal non-flat space with a constant volume, we study the role played by the closed string tachyon in the cosmology of the effective four-dimensional space-time. The effective…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe points to a small positive value for the cosmological constant or vacuum energy density. We discuss recent ideas that the cosmological constant plus LHC results might hint at critical phenomena…
Motivated by reported claims of the measurements of a variation of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ we consider a theory where the electric charge, and consequently $\alpha$, is not a constant but depends on the Ricci scalar $R$. %We…
Recent cosmological observations suggest the existence of a positive cosmological constant $\Lambda$ with the magnitude $\Lambda(G\hbar/c^3) \approx 10^{-123}$. This review discusses several aspects of the cosmological constant both from…
We study topologically massive (2+1)-dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant. The masses of the linearized curvature excitations about AdS_3 backgrounds are not only shifted from their flat background values but, more…
We present a modified gravity framework where the vacuum is modeled as a Higgs-type scalar field $\chi$ undergoing spontaneous symmetry breaking. By introducing a coupling $Q^\nu = \alpha T \nabla^\nu \chi$, we formalize a displacement…
Theories of the cosmological constant fall into two classes, those in which the vacuum energy is fixed by the fundamental theory and those in which it is adjustable in some way. For each class we discuss key challenges. The string theory…
A cosmology is considered driven by a stress-energy tensor consisting of a perfect fluid, an inhomogeneous pressure term (which we call a ``tachyonic dust'' for reasons which will become apparent) and a cosmological constant. The…
We consider the standard model with local scale invariance. The theory shows exact scale invariance of dimensionally regulated action. We show that massless gauge fields, which may be abelian or non-abelian, lead to vanishing contribution…
The case grows ever stronger that the average density of matter, ordinary and dark, is less than the critical density required for a flat universe. However, most of determinations of the mass density have been dynamical, hence sensitive…
We quantify two main pathways through which baryonic physics biases cluster count cosmology. We create mock cluster samples that reproduce the baryon content inferred from X-ray observations. We link clusters to their counterparts in a dark…
We show that stable local cosmic strings are a generic prediction of supersymmetric models where supersymmetry is broken at scales within a few orders of magnitude of the weak scale and is fed down to the observable sector by gauge…
Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that…
We provide an analytical solution to the quantum dynamics of a flat Friedmann-Lema\^itre- Robertson-Walker model with a massless scalar field in the presence of a small and positive cosmological constant, in the context of Loop Quantum…
Scalar fields with inverse power-law effective potentials may provide a negative pressure component to the energy density of the universe today, as required by cosmological observations. In order to be cosmologically relevant today, the…
The cosmological constant problem is turned around to argue for a new foundational physics postulate underlying a consistent quantum theory of gravity and matter, such as string theory. This postulate is a quantum equivalence principle…
We study the role that tachyon fields may play in cosmology as compared to the well-established use of minimally coupled scalar fields. We first elaborate on a kind of correspondence existing between tachyons and minimally coupled scalar…
Quintessential inflation provides a unified description of the early and late accelerated phases of the Universe, linking the inflationary epoch to the present-day dark energy-dominated era through a single scalar degree of freedom. In this…
Studying a certain sub class of higher order Horndeski (scalar-tensor) theories we discuss a method discovered recently permitting analytic black hole solutions with a non trivial and regular scalar field. One of the solutions found has de…