Theories of the Cosmological Constant

Abstract

This is a talk given at the conference ``Critical Dialogues in Cosmology'' at Princeton University, June 24-- 27, 1996. It gives a brief summary of our present theoretical understanding regarding the value of the cosmological constant, and describes how to calculate the probability distribution of the observed cosmological constant in cosmological theories with a large number of subuniverses (i. e., different expanding regions, or different terms in the wave function of the universe) in which this constant takes different values.

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