Canonical formulation and path integral for local vacuum energy sequestering

Abstract

We establish the Hamiltonian analysis and the canonical path integral for a local formulation of vacuum energy sequestering. In particular, by considering the state of the universe as a superposition of vacuum states corresponding to different values of the cosmological and gravitational constants, the path integral is extended to include integrations over the cosmological and gravitational constants. The result is an extension of the Ng-van Dam form of the path integral of unimodular gravity. It is argued to imply a relation between the fraction of the most likely values of the gravitational and cosmological constants and the average values of the energy density and pressure of matter over spacetime. Finally, we construct and analyze a BRST-exact formulation of the theory, which can be considered as a topological field theory.

30 pages, V2: Version published in PRD

References in corpus (8)

• Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point
• Lectures on the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Vacuum Energy Sequestering: The Framework and Its Cosmological Consequences
• 'The End'
• Sequestering effects on and of vacuum decay
• Topological Induced Gravity
• Induced Gravity and Topological Quantum Field Theory
• Note About Canonical Formalism for Normalized Gravity And Vacuum Energy Sequestering Model

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Darkness without dark matter and energy -- generalized unimodular gravity
• Vacuum Energy Sequestering and Graviton Loops
• Losing the trace to find dynamical Newton or Planck constants
• On the canonical structure and extra mode of generalized unimodular gravity
• Sakharov's induced gravity and the Poincaré gauge theory
• On the Constraint Structure of Vacuum Energy Sequestering