English

The Cosmological Constant and the String Landscape

High Energy Physics - Theory 2007-05-23 v2

Abstract

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 landscape is an example of an adjustment mechanism. We discuss the status of this idea, and future directions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0603249,
  title  = {The Cosmological Constant and the String Landscape},
  author = {Joseph Polchinski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0603249},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

35 pages, 2 figures. Rapporteur talk at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics, December, 2005. v2: Small changes. Author notes that this is not a review article but a discussion of a few specific issues

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:35:31.306Z