The one-loop effective action for non-minimal scalar modified gravity on de Sitter background with a constant scalar field is found. The corresponding induced cosmological constant is evaluated. It is shown that quantum effects in non-minimal modified gravity may induce an early-time de Sitter universe even in the situation when such solution does not occur on the classical level. Classical reconstruction of the theory is presented in such a way that the resulting theory has a cosmological solution unifying early-time inflation with late-time acceleration.
New Cosmological Solutions in Nonlocal Modified Gravity
考虑了具有$Λ$项的非定域修正引力的宇宙学性质,其中非定域性是$R \mathcal{F}(\Box) R$型的。利用形式为$\Box R = r R +s,$的解析式,我们找到了几个a(t)非奇异的反弹宇宙学解,它们对应于空间曲率参数k的所有三个值。我们还从F(R)理论的角度讨论了这种改进的引力模型。
We propose a simple model that provides a dynamical cancellation mechanism of the vacuum energy density appearing either in the form of a bare cosmological constant, quantum fluctuations of matter fields or the result of phase transitions. This `conformal compensator model' is based on a conformal coupling $A(φ)$ between the Einstein and the Jordan frames. This couples a second scalar field $λ$ to the trace of the matter energy-momentum tensor, including the bare cosmological constant, and serves as a dynamical Lagrange multiplier. As a result, the scalar $λ$ relaxes to a value which cancels t…
We study the quantum vacuum zero point energy in the Schwarzschild black hole as well as in the Nariai limit of the dS-Schwarzschild backgrounds. We show that the regularized vacuum energy density near the black hole and also in the Nariai setup match exactly with the corresponding value in the flat background, scaling with the fourth power of the mass of the quantum field. The horizon radius of the dS space created from the vacuum zero point energy introduces a new length scale which should be compared with the black hole horizon radius. There is an upper limiting mass for the black hole imme…
Recently it has been argued that a correct reading of the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum could lead to a solution to the cosmological constant problem. In this work we critically examine such a proposal, finding it questionable due to conceptual and self-consistency problems, as well as issues with the actual calculations. We conclude that the proposal is inadequate as a solution to the cosmological constant problem.
In this paper we continue earlier investigations of evolutionary formulations of the Einstein vacuum constraint equations originally introduced by Rácz. Motivated by the strong evidence from these works that the resulting vacuum initial data sets are generically not asymptotically flat we analyse the asymptotics of the solutions of a modified formulation by a combination of analytical and numerical techniques. We conclude that the vacuum initial data sets generated with this new formulation are generically asymptotically flat.
We propose a suitable vacuum state for a quantized Dirac field interacting with a classical scalar field in a Friedman-Robertson-Walker-Lemaitre spacetime. This state is constructed from an extended version of the adiabatic expansion of the associated Fourier modes of the field. We compute the full renormalized stress-energy tensor. For any given initial time, this instantaneous vacuum can always be chosen to have vanishing Fourier modes for the renormalized stress-energy tensor. We check the consistency of the solution for several inflationary models.
Double-layered vacuum bubbles and cosmological phase transitions
School of Fundamental Physics and Mathematical Sciences, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(杭州高等研究院基础物理与数学学院,中国科学院大学);School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(物理科学学院,中国科学院大学);Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences(理论物理研究所,中国科学院);School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-sen University(物理与天文学院,中山大学)
The sequestering mechanism has been proposed as a remedy to the old cosmological constant problem of the non-gravitating vacuum energy in the matter sector. Here it is shown that an extension of this global constraint mechanism arises naturally from an averaging condition for residual cosmological constants produced in different patches of the Universe. The new mechanism naturally yields the small observed value that gives rise to cosmic acceleration at late times, hence, addressing the new cosmological constant problem. Hereby the halo model picture is adopted with all matter content ultimate…
In the context of Finsler-Randers theory we consider, for a first time, the cosmological scenario of the varying vacuum. In particular, we assume the existence of a cosmological fluid source described by an ideal fluid and the varying vacuum terms. We determine the cosmological history of this model by performing a detailed study on the dynamics of the field equations. We determine the limit of General Relativity, while we find new eras in the cosmological history provided by the geometrodynamical terms provided by the Finsler-Randers theory.
The deep interrelation between elementary particle physics and cosmology manifests itself when one considers the contribution of quantum fluctuations of vacuum fields to the dark energy and the effective cosmological constant. The contribution of zero-point energy exceeds by many orders of magnitude the observational cosmological upper bound on the energy density of the universe. Therefore it seems natural to expect that vacuum fluctuations of the fundamental fields would influence the cosmological evolution in any way. Our aim in this review article is to describe a recent investigation of th…
We derive the quantum energy-momentum tensor and the corresponding quantum equation of state for gauge field theory using the effective Lagrangian approach. The energy-momentum tensor has a term proportional to the space-time metric and provides a finite non-diverging contribution to the effective cosmological term. This allows to investigate the influence of the gauge field theory vacuum polarisation on the evolution of Friedmann cosmology, inflation and primordial gravitational waves. The Type I-IV solutions of the Friedmann equations induced by the gauge field theory vacuum polarisation pro…
We consider the possibility of generalizing the Newtonian law of gravity and the transition to a general relativistic model for weak fields with the inclusion of a repulsive term identified as a cosmological constant. The analysis includes that of the test particle's motion in a modified gravitational field of the Hilbert metric and then the problem of the reverse transition from the post-Galilean case to the construction of a modified exact point mass metric which includes the $Λ$-term.
We study the vacuum polarisation effects of the Dirac fermionic field induced by a pointlike global monopole located in the cosmological de Sitter spacetime. First we derive the four orthonormal Dirac modes in this background in a closed form. Quantising the field using these modes, we then compute the fermionic condensate, $\langle 0| \overlineΨ Ψ| 0\rangle$, as well as the vacuum expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor for a massive Dirac field, regularised in a particular way. We have used the Abel-Plana summation formula in order to extract the global monopole contribution to these…
Our current measurements of the Standard Model parameters imply that the Higgs field resides in a metastable electroweak vacuum, where the vacuum can decay to a lower ground state, with cataclysmic repercussions for our Universe. According to our observations, no such event has happened in the observable universe, in spite of the various energetic processes that could have triggered it. This work serves as an overview of a method that uses the metastability of the false vacuum during cosmological inflation to provide constraints on the Higgs curvature coupling $ξ$. Considering also the effects…
The renormalization of the vacuum energy in quantum field theory (QFT) is usually plagued with theoretical conundrums related not only with the renormalization procedure itself, but also with the fact that the final result leads usually to very large (finite) contributions incompatible with the measured value of $Λ$ in cosmology. Herein, we compute the zero-point energy (ZPE) for a nonminimally coupled (massive) scalar field in FLRW spacetime using the off-shell adiabatic renormalization technique employed in previous work. The general off-shell result yields a smooth function $ρ_{\rm vac}(H)$…
A reconstruction of modified gravity is proposed by establishing a correspondence between the effective density of the modified gravity and the holographic density. The non-homogeneous term in the modified Friedmann equation, generated by the vacuum (holographic) energy density, lead to reconstructed models that contain explicitly, as part of the solution, the Einstein-Hilbert term. It was shown that the $Λ$CDM-type cosmic histories allow the general relativity Lagrangian with cosmological constant as a particular reconstructed solution. The Starobinsky term appears in some reconstructed solut…