Ground state of the universe and the cosmological constant. A nonperturbative analysis

Abstract

The physical Hamiltonian of a gravity-matter system depends on the choice of time, with the vacuum naturally identified as its ground state. We study the expanding universe with scalar field in the volume time gauge. We show that the vacuum energy density computed from the resulting Hamiltonian is a non-linear function of the cosmological constant and time. This result provides a new perspective on the relation between time, the cosmological constant, and vacuum energy.

5 pages, Small title change. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (4)

• Time and a physical Hamiltonian for quantum gravity
• Solution to the Cosmological Constant Problem in a Regge Quantum Gravity Model
• Polymer inflation
• A small cosmological constant due to non-perturbative quantum effects

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