Duality and the cosmological constant

Abstract

A dynamical theory is studied in which a scalar field $\varphi$ in Einstein- Minkowski space is coupled to the four-velocity $N_{\mu }$ of a preferred inertial observer in that space. As a consistent requirement on this coupling we study a principle of duality invariance of the dynamical mass- term of $\varphi$ at some universal length in the small-distance regime. In the large-distance regime duality breaking can be introduced by giving a back- ground value to $\varphi$ and a back-ground direction to $N_{\mu }$. It is shown that, in an appropriate approximation, duality breaking can be related to the emergence of a characteristic phase in which the condensation of the ground state allows massive excitations with a characteristic scale of squared mass which agrees with present observational bound for the cosmological constant.

To appear in International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol 36, No. 9, (1997)

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Equivalence between Palatini and metric formalisms of f(R)-gravity by divergence free current
• Mechanism for a Decaying Cosmological Constant
• Decaying cosmological parameter in the early universe from NKK theory of gravity
• Scalar Tensor Theories and Hadamard State Condition
• Duality, Time-asymmetry and the Condensation of Vacuum
• Signature change, vacuum condensation and cosmological constant