Related papers: Strong Coupling and the Cosmological Constant
There is some evidence that the Universe is presently undergoing accelerating expansion. This has restored some credit to the scenarios with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. From the point of view of a theory of fundamental…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
A dynamical theory is studied in which a scalar field $\phi$ in Einstein- Minkowski space is coupled to the four-velocity $N_{\mu}$ of a preferred inertial observer in that space. As a consistent requirement on this coupling we study a…
We present exact solutions of string cosmological models characterized by five dimensional metrics (with four-dimensional real Lie groups as isometry groups), space independent dilaton and vanishing torsion. As an example we consider VII 0…
Within conventional big bang cosmology, it has proven to be very difficult to understand why today's cosmological constant is so small. In this paper, we show that a cyclic model of the universe can naturally incorporate a dynamical…
The quest of a vanishing cosmological constant is considered in the simplest anomaly-free chiral gauge extension of the electroweak standard model where the new physics is limited to a well defined additional flavordynamics above the Fermi…
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…
We hypothesize that the vacuum is spontaneously shifted from the self-dual point in the moduli space, at which all dimensions are compact, and that the true vacuum results from the decompactification of the four space-time dimensions and…
We consider whether current notions about superstring theory below the Planck scale are compatible with cosmology. We find that the anticipated form for the dilaton interaction creates a serious roadblock for inflation and makes it unlikely…
We present time-dependent solutions in the higher-dimensional gravity which are related to supergravity in the particular cases. Here, we consider p-branes with a cosmological constant and the intersections of two and more branes. The…
Recent observations of high-redshift supernovae seem to suggest that the global geometry of the Universe may be affected by a `cosmological constant', which acts to accelerate the expansion rate with time. But these data by themselves still…
We investigate consequences of an ultraviolet fixed point in quantum gravity for the cosmological constant. For this purpose we perform dimensional reduction of a general dilatation symmetric effective action $\Gamma$ in dimension $d>4$ to…
In this paper we construct a stringy embedding of the dark bubble model of an expanding 4D cosmology with the help of branes rotating in extra dimensions. The universe rides a bubble which has nucleated in an unstable higher dimensional…
After reviewing the cosmological constant problem - why is Lambda not huge? - I outline the two basic approaches that had emerged by the late 1980s, and note that each made a clear prediction. Precision cosmological experiments now indicate…
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 the cosmological constant problem in a three-dimensional N=2 supergravity theory with gauge group SU[2]_{global}xU[1]_{local}. The model we consider is known to admit string-like configurations, the so-called semi-local cosmic…
We study the role of the cosmological constant (CC) as a component of dark energy (DE). It is argued that the cosmological term is in general unavoidable and it should not be ignored even when dynamical DE sources are considered. From the…
Deconstruction provides a novel way of dealing with the notoriously difficult ultraviolet problems of four-dimensional gravity. This approach also naturally leads to a new perspective on the holographic principle, tying it to the…
We construct a class of theories which are scale invariant on quantum level in all orders of perturbation theory. In a subclass of these models scale invariance is spontaneously broken, leading to the existence of a massless dilaton. The…
Positive vacuum energy together with extra dimensions of space imply that our four-dimensional Universe is unstable, generically to decompactification of the extra dimensions. Either quantum tunneling or thermal fluctuations carry one past…