On a physical description and origin of the cosmological constant

Abstract

In this paper we use and extend the results present in \cite{1,2,3,4} and in particular in \cite{4} to obtain a statistical description of the cosmological constant in a cosmological de Sitter universe in terms of massless excitations with Planckian effects. First of all, we show that at a classical level, the cosmological constant $\Lambda >0$ can be obtained only for $T\to 0$. Similarly to the black hole case, when quantum effects are taken into account, a representation for $\Lambda$ is possible in terms of massless excitations, provided that quantum corrections to the Misner-Sharp mass are considered. Moreover, thanks to quantum fluctuations, an effective cosmological constant arises depending on the physical scale under consideration, thus representing a possible solution to the cosmological constant problem without introducing a quintessence field. The smalness of the actual value for $\Lambda$ can be due to the existence of a quantum decoherence scale above the Planck length such that the spacetime evolves as a pure de Sitter universe with a small averaged cosmological constant frozen in the lowest energy state.

Final version published in Class. Quantum Grav

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Einstein, Planck and Vera Rubin: relevant encounters between the Cosmological and the Quantum Worlds
• The cosmological constant from Planckian fluctuations and the averaging procedure
• A proposal for Heisenberg uncertainty principle and STUR for curved backgrounds: an application to white dwarf, neutron stars and black holes
• The physical origin of the cosmological constant: continuum limit and the analogy with the Casimir effect
• The physical nature of the cosmological constant and the decoherence scale in a renormalization-group approach