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Relaxation of the Cosmological Constant

Authors :
Graham, Peter W.
Kaplan, David E.
Rajendran, Surjeet
Source :
Phys. Rev. D 100, 015048 (2019)
Publication Year :
2019

Abstract

We present a model that naturally tunes a large positive cosmological constant to a small cosmological constant. A slowly rolling scalar field decreases the cosmological constant to a small negative value, causing the universe to contract, thus reheating it. An expanding universe with a small positive cosmological constant can be obtained, respectively, by coupling this solution to any model of a cosmological bounce and coupling the scalar field to a sector that undergoes a technically natural phase transition at the meV scale. A robust prediction of this model is a rolling scalar field today with some coupling to the standard model. This can potentially be experimentally probed in a variety of cosmological and terrestrial experiments, such as probes of the equation of state of dark energy, birefringence in the cosmic microwave background and terrestrial tests of Lorentz violation.<br />Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures

Details

Database :
arXiv
Journal :
Phys. Rev. D 100, 015048 (2019)
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsarx.1902.06793
Document Type :
Working Paper
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.100.015048