Axionic cosmological constant

Abstract

We propose a novel, higher-derivative, Weyl-invariant and generally-covariant theory for the cosmological constant. This theory is a mimetic construction with gauge fields playing the role of dynamical variables. These fields compose the Chern-Simons current instead of the vector field used in the Henneaux and Teitelboim formulation of the unimodular gravity. The equations of motion exactly reproduce the traceless Einstein equations. We demonstrate that, reformulated in Weyl-invariant variables, this novel theory reduces to standard general relativity with the cosmological constant as a Lagrange multiplier. This Lagrange multiplier has an axion-like coupling.

15 pages+refs, no figures, comments welcome!

References in corpus (7)

• Vector Inflation
• Transverse Fierz-Pauli symmetry
• Lectures on the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Low-Energy Quantum Effective Action for Relativistic Superfluids
• Fake Conformal Symmetry in Conformal Cosmological Models
• Three-Form Gauging of axion Symmetries and Gravity
• Hamiltonian analysis of mimetic scalar gravity revisited