Effective cosmological constant induced by stochastic fluctuations of Newton's constant

Abstract

We consider implications of the microscopic dynamics of spacetime for the evolution of cosmological models. We argue that quantum geometry effects may lead to stochastic fluctuations of the gravitational constant, which is thus considered as a macroscopic effective dynamical quantity. Consistency with Riemannian geometry entails the presence of a time-dependent dark energy term in the modified field equations, which can be expressed in terms of the dynamical gravitational constant. We suggest that the late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe may be ascribed to quantum fluctuations in the geometry of spacetime rather than the vacuum energy from the matter sector.

10 pages, 1 figure, v2: added legend in Fig.1 and a reference

References in corpus (3)

• Zero-point quantum fluctuations and dark energy
• How fundamental are fundamental constants?
• Fundamental constants and cosmic vacuum: the micro and macro connection

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• Critical Analysis of Replacing Dark Matter and Dark Energy with a Model of Stochastic Spacetime