The nature of $\Lambda$ and the mass of the graviton: A critical view

Abstract

The existence of a non-zero cosmological constant $\Lambda$ gives rise to controversial interpretations. Is $\Lambda$ a universal constant fixing the geometry of an empty universe, as fundamental as the Planck constant or the speed of light in the vacuum? Its natural place is then on the left-hand side of the Einstein equation. Is it instead something emerging from a perturbative calculus performed on the metric $g\_\mu \nu$ solution of the Einstein equation and to which it might be given a material status of (dark or bright) "energy"? It should then be part of the content of the right-hand side of the Einstein equations. The purpose of this paper is not to elucidate the fundamental nature of $\Lambda$, but instead we aim to present and discuss some of the arguments in favor of both interpretations of the cosmological constant. We conclude that if the fundamental of the geometry of space-time is minkowskian, then the square of the mass of the graviton is proportional to $\Lambda$; otherwise, if the fundamental state is deSitter/AdS, then the graviton is massless in the deSitterian sense.

39 pages

References in corpus (9)

• Imprints of Relic Gravitational Waves in Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Massive Spin-2 Field in De Sitter Space
• "Massless" vector field in de Sitter Universe
• On massive spin 2 electromagnetic interactions
• De Sitter Waves and the Zero Curvature Limit
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Slow-Roll Inflation in Non-geometric Flux Compactification
• First-order Cosmological Perturbations Engendered by Point-like Masses
• One-loop renormalization of a gravity-scalar system
• Constraint on reconstructed f(R) gravity models from gravitational waves
• Cold Dark Matter: A Gluonic Bose--Einstein Condensate in Anti-de Sitter Space Time
• Probing extra dimensions through cosmological observations of dark energy
• A misleading naming convention: de Sitter `tachyonic' scalar fields