The cosmological constant problem (and its sequester)

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• Tony Padilla (Nottingham)
• Wednesday 04 June 2014, 14:15-15:15
• MR2, Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Joan Camps.

I will review the notorious cosmological constant problem, sometimes described as the worst fine tuning problem in Physics. I will explain the true nature of the problem, which is one of radiative instability against any change in the effective description. I will recall Weinberg’s venerable no-go theorem that prohibits certain attempts to “solve” this problem before going on to explain a new mechanism that circumvents Weinberg. This is the vacuum energy sequester, a global modification of GR that results in the cancellation of large vacuum energy contributions from a protected matter sector (taken to include the Standard Model) at each and every order in the perturbative loop expansion. Cosmological consequences are a Universe which has finite space-time volume, will ultimately crunch, and for which dark energy can only be a transient.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Physics Colloquium series.

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