相关论文: Irrational Monodromies of Vacuum Energy
Under the hypothesis that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
Field theory models of axion monodromy have been shown to exhibit vacuum energy sequestering as an emergent phenomenon for cancelling radiative corrections to the cosmological constant. We study one loop corrections to this class of models…
Linear axion monodromy models modulated with higher powers of fields naturally realize the quantum-mechanical flux discharge mechanism for relaxing the cosmological constant toward zero. Working with multiple copies of superposed linear and…
We argue that theories with multiple axions generically contain a large number of vacua that can account for the smallness of the cosmological constant. In a theory with N axions, the dominant instantons with charges Q determine the…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
We argue that in the context of string theory a large number N of connected degenerate vacua that mix will lead to a ground state with much lower energy, essentially because of the standard level repulsion of quantum theory for the…
Axions with broken discrete shift symmetry (axion monodromy) have recently played a central role both in the discussion of inflation and the `relaxion' approach to the hierarchy problem. We suggest a very minimalist way to constrain such…
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…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
We consider phase transitions and their contributions to vacuum energy in the manifestly local theory of vacuum energy sequestering. We demonstrate that the absence of instabilities imposes constraints on the couplings of gravitating and…
In this work, we study field theoretic systems of a single axion-like field with linear potentials modulated by cosine terms, allegedly induced by non-perturbative instanton configurations. These systems are considered in expanding-Universe…
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…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is described, using a superconducting analogy in which fermions coupled to gravitons are in an unstable false vauum. The coupling of the fermions to gravitons and a screened attractive…
A QCD axion with a time-dependent decay constant has been known to be able to accommodate high-scale inflation without producing topological defects or too large isocurvature perturbations on CMB scales. We point out that a dynamical decay…
String theory axions are interesting candidates for fields whose potential might be controllable over super-Planckian field ranges and therefore as possible candidates for inflatons in large field inflation. Axion monodromy scenarios are…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
In this essay, we present a new understanding of the cosmological constant problem, built upon the realization that the vacuum energy density can be expressed in terms of a phase space volume. We introduce a UV-IR regularization which…
We show that a pair of field theory monodromies in which the shift symmetry is broken by small, well motivated deformations, naturally incorporates a mechanism for cancelling off radiative corrections to the cosmological constant. The…
The low energy field theory for N type IIA D4-branes at strong 't Hooft coupling, wrapped on a circle with antiperiodic boundary conditions for fermions, is known to have a vacuum energy which depends on the $\theta$ angle for the gauge…