Devaluation: a dynamical mechanism for a naturally small cosmological constant

Abstract

We propose a natural solution to the cosmological constant problem consistent with the standard cosmology and successful over a broad range of energies. This solution is based on the existence of a new field, the devaluton, with its potential modeled on a tilted cosine. After inflation, the universe reheats and populates the devaluton's many minima. As the universe cools, domain walls form between different regions. The domain wall network then evolves and sweeps away regions of higher vacuum energy in favor of lower energy ones. Gravitation itself provides a cutoff at a minimum vacuum energy, thus leaving the universe with a small cosmological constant comparable in magnitude to the present day dark energy density.

6 pages and prepared in ReV-TeX added notes on eltro-weak breaking and ds vacua

References in corpus (10)

• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• Quantization of Four-form Fluxes and Dynamical Neutralization of the Cosmological Constant
• Supergravity Domain Walls
• The Risetime of Nearby Type Ia Supernovae
• Saltatory Relaxation of the Cosmological Constant
• Evading the cosmological domain wall problem
• Local and global gravitational aspects of domain wall space-times
• Chain Inflation in the Landscape: "Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble"
• Large scale structure from biased non-equilibrium phase transitions - percolation theory picture
• Non-Extreme and Ultra-Extreme Domain Walls and Their Global Space-Times

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Cuscuton: A Causal Field Theory with an Infinite Speed of Sound
• Vacuum Energy as the Origin of the Gravitational Constant
• Dynamics of Biased Domain Walls and the Devaluation Mechanism
• Observational Constraints on Varying-alpha Domain Walls
• Bifurcation and pattern changing with two real scalar fields
• Gravitational domain walls and the dynamics of $G$