Related papers: Fluctuations, Ghosts, and the Cosmological Constan…
Assuming the existence of a scalar field which undergoes "ghost condensation" and which has a suitably chosen potential, it is possible to obtain a non-singular bouncing cosmology in the presence of regular matter and radiation. The…
We propose that the solution to the cosmological vacuum energy puzzle may come from the infrared sector of the effective theory of gravity, where the impact of the trace anomaly is of upmost relevance. We proceed by introducing two…
We study a symmetry, schematically Energy -> - Energy, which suppresses matter contributions to the cosmological constant. The requisite negative energy fluctuations are identified with a "ghost" copy of the Standard Model. Gravity…
Motivated by some recent speculative attempts to model the dark energy, scalar fields with negative kinetic energy coupled to gravity without a cosmological constant are considered. It is shown that in the presence of an ordinary fluid, any…
We derive strong observational limits on any possible large-scale spatial variation in the values of physical 'constants' whose space-time evolution is driven by a scalar field. The limits are imposed by the isotropy of the microwave…
A modified-gravity-type model of two hypothetical massless vector fields is presented. These vector fields are gravitationally coupled to standard matter and an effective cosmological constant. Considered in a cosmological context, the…
We have critically compared different approaches to the cosmological constant problem, which is at the edge of elementary particle physics and cosmology. This problem is deeply connected with the difficulties formulating a theory of quantum…
We consider a higher dimensional gravity theory with a negative kinetic energy scalar field and a cosmological constant. We find that the theory admits an exact cosmological solution for the scale factor of our universe. It has the feature…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
The value of the cosmological constant is one of the major puzzles of modern cosmology: it is tiny but nonzero. Sorkin predicted, from the Causet approach to quantum gravity, that the cosmological constant has quantum fluctuations. The…
We show that the cosmological constant appears as a Lagrange multiplier if nature is described by a canonical noncommutative spacetime. It is thus an arbitrary parameter unrelated to the action and thus to vacuum fluctuations. The…
The value of the cosmological constant is explained in terms of a noisy diffusion of energy from the low energy particle physics degrees of freedom to the fundamental Planckian granularity which is expected from general arguments in quantum…
We study the non-perturbative renormalisation of quantum gravity in four dimensions. Taking care to disentangle physical degrees of freedom, we observe the topological nature of conformal fluctuations arising from the functional measure.…
The standard model of elementary particle physics and the theory of general relativity can be extended by the introduction of a vacuum variable which is responsible for the near vanishing of the present cosmological constant (vacuum energy…
We propose a phenomenological approach to the cosmological constant problem based on generally covariant non-local and acausal modifications of four-dimensional gravity at enormous distances. The effective Newton constant becomes very small…
When the vacuum fluctuation pressure is calculated directly from fundamental principles of quantum field theory, in the same manner as vacuum fluctuation energy density is commonly calculated, one finds it is not equal to the negative of…
The presence of a cosmological constant, Lambda, in an action with higher powers of the curvature can produce rapidly oscillating metrics. We develop a perturbative approach for generating periodic solutions to the non-linear field…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
We discuss from the condensed-matter point of view the recent idea that the Poisson fluctuations of cosmological constant about zero could be a source of the observed dark energy. We argue that the thermodynamic fluctuations of Lambda are…
We present a review of cosmological solutions in non-linear massive gravity, focusing on the stability of perturbations. Although homogeneous and isotropic solutions have been found, these are now known to suffer from either Higuchi ghost…