Related papers: Gravitational Instability of the Vacuum and the Co…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
In a recent paper we discovered that a fermionic condensate is formed from gravitational interactions due to the covariant coupling of fermions in the presence of a torsion-fermion contact interaction. The condensate gap gives a negative…
A particular compensation-type solution of the main cosmological constant problem has been proposed recently, with two massless vector fields dynamically canceling an arbitrary cosmological constant \Lambda. The naive expectation is that…
A huge value of cosmological constant characteristic for the particle physics and the inflation of early Universe are inherently related to each other: one can construct a fine-tuned superpotential, which produces a flat potential of…
We trace the origin of the cosmological constant problem to the assumption that Newton's constant $G$ sets the scale for cosmology. And then we show that once this assumption is relaxed, the very same cosmic acceleration which has served to…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance physics, corresponding to an energy at least as large as the Fermi scale. The…
We propose a time-varying cosmological constant with a fixed equation of state, which evolves mainly through its interaction with the background during most of the long history of the universe. However, such interaction does not exist in…
We deal with a dynamical mechanism in which a large cosmological constant, as suggested by inflationary scenarios, decays due to expansion of the universe. This mechanism has its origin in the gravitational coupling of the vacuum density.…
We argue that, when coupled to Einstein's theory of gravity, the Yukawa theory may solve the cosmological constant problem in the following sense: The radiative corrections of fermions generate an effective potential for the scalar field,…
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,…
It is well-known that quantum field theory (QFT) induces a huge value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, which is outrageously inconsistent with cosmological observations. We review here some aspects of this fundamental theoretical…
An accelerated universe should naturally have a vacuum energy density determined by its dynamical curvature. The cosmological constant is most likely a temporary description of a dynamical variable that has been drastically evolving from…
The cosmological constant problem is examined under the assumption that the extrinsic curvature of the space-time contributes to the vacuum. A compensation mechanism based on a variable cosmological term is proposed. Under a suitable…
We discuss phenomenology of quantum vacuum. Phenomenology of macroscopic systems has three sources: thermodynamics, topology and symmetry. Momentum space topology determines the universality classes of fermionic vacua. The vacuum in its…
A cosmological constant in the regime of low space-time curvature is calculated in the recently proposed version of F(R) supergravity with a generic cubic function F. The F(R) supergravity is the N=1 supersymmetric extension of f(R)…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
The cosmological constant, i.e., the energy density stored in the true vacuum state of all existing fields in the Universe, is the simplest and the most natural possibility to describe the current cosmic acceleration. However, despite its…
On the occasion of a century from the proposal of General relativity by Einstein, I attempt to tackle some open issues in modern cosmology, via a toy but non-trivial model. Specifically, I would like to link together: (i) the smallness of…
We investigate a conformal invariant gravitational model which is taken to hold at pre-inflationary era. The conformal invariance allows to make a dynamical distinction between the two unit systems (or conformal frames) usually used in…
I try to revive, and possibly reconcile, a debate started a few years ago, about the relative roles of a bare cosmological constant and of a vacuum energy, by taking the attitude to try to get the most from the physics now available as…