Related papers: Fluctuations, Ghosts, and the Cosmological Constan…
Zero point fluctuations of quantum fields should generate a large cosmological constant energy density in any spacetime. How then can we have anything other than de Sitter space without fine tuning? Well tempering -- dynamical cancellation…
We consider an effective field theory description of gravity coupled to a scalar field with volume-preserving diffeomorphism and Weyl invariances. The smallness of the cosmological constant is achieved when the potential of the scalar is…
The presence of cosmological fluctuations influences the background cosmology in which the perturbations evolve. This back-reaction arises as a second order effect in the cosmological perturbation expansion. The effect is cumulative in the…
Naive calculations in quantum field theory suggest that vacuum fluctuations should induce an enormous cosmological constant. What if these estimates are right? I argue that even a huge cosmological constant might be hidden in Planck scale…
We consider a model for gravity that is invariant under global scale transformations. It includes one extra real scalar field coupled non-minimally to the gravity fields. In this model all the dimensionful parameters like the gravitational…
A two dimensional matter coupled model of quantum gravity is studied in the Dirac approach to constrained dynamics in the presence of a cosmological constant. It is shown that after partial fixing to the conformal gauge the requirement of a…
We study the infrared effective theory of gravity that stems from the quantum trace anomaly. Quantum fluctuations of the metric induce running of the cosmological constant and the Newton constant at cosmological scales. By imposing the…
I argue that a solution to the cosmological constant problem is to assume that the expectation value of the quantum vacuum stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric tensor with a negative energy density and positive pressure. This…
Based on the assertion that the cosmological constant problem is essentially a quantum gravity problem, the framework which addresses the cosmological constant problem should also bear a picture for the ``quantum space-time''. In this talk…
Bimetric gravity theories allow for many different types of cosmological solutions, but not all of them are theoretically allowed. In this work we discuss the conditions to satisfy the Higuchi bound and to avoid gradient instabilities in…
I describe an approach which relates classical gravity to the quantum microstructure of spacetime. In this approach, the field equations arise from maximizing the density of states of the matter plus geometry. The former is identified using…
The positive energy theorem precludes the possibility of Minkowski flat space decaying by any mechanism. In certain circumstances, however, large quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field could arise---not only at the Planck scale,…
We discuss how the modifications of the standard Einstein's equations needed to support the cosmological bounce can at the same time lead to vanishing of the well known cosmological constant problem, while also studying the effects of…
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…
In a recent work we have argued that nosy energy momentum diffusion due to space-time discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) can be responsible for the generation of a cosmological constant…
We address issues on the origin of gravity and the cosmological constant problem based on a recent understanding about the correspondence between noncommutative field theory and gravity. We suggest that the cosmological constant problem can…
One hope to solve the cosmological constant problem is to identify a symmetry principle, based on which the cosmological constant can be reduced either to zero, or to a tiny value. Here, we note that requiring that the vacuum state is…
The presence of cosmological perturbations affects the background metric and matter configuration in which the perturbations propagate. This effect, studied a long time ago for gravitational waves, also is operational for scalar…
We discuss the naturalness of exponential potentials for quintessence, showing that the resulting almost flat direction in the space of scalar fields, as well as the small time dependent cosmon mass, can be related to an anomalous…
It is argued in a recent letter Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 131302(2019) that the effect of a large cosmological constant can be naturally hidden in Planck scale curvature fluctuations. We point out that there are problems with the author's…