The Gravitational Instability of the Vacuum: Insight into the Cosmological Constant Problem

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dc.creatorAlexander, Stephon
dc.creatorMbonye, Manasse
dc.creatorMoffat, John
dc.date2004-06-23
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T04:17:05Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T04:17:05Z
dc.descriptionA mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The coupling of the fermions to the gravitational field generates fermion condensates with zero momentum and a phase transition induces a nonperturbative transition to a true vacuum state by producing a positive energy gap $Δ$ in the vacuum energy, identified with $\sqrtΛ$, where $Λ$ is the cosmological constant. In the strong coupling limit a large cosmological constant induces a period of inflation in the early universe, followed by a weak coupling limit in which $\sqrtΛ$ vanishes exponentially fast as the universe expands due to the dependence of the energy gap on the density of Fermi surface fermions, $D(ε)$, predicting a small cosmological constant in the present universe.
dc.description13 Pages
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0406202
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0406202
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/52616
dc.subjectHigh Energy Physics - Theory
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.subjectGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
dc.titleThe Gravitational Instability of the Vacuum: Insight into the Cosmological Constant Problem
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