2024/05/15 by E. Epelbaum, Epelbaum, E., J. Gegelia +5
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #Gas Dynamics and Kinetic Theory #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.09301
openalex publication_date 2024/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A consistency condition of general relativity as an effective field theory in Minkowskian background uniquely fixes the value of the cosmological constant. In two-loop calculations, including the interaction of gravitons with matter fields, it has been shown that this value of the cosmological constant leads to vanishing vacuum energy, under the assumption that the energy-momentum tensor of the gravitational field is given by the pseudotensor of Landau-Lifshitz's classic textbook. Here, we demonstrate that this result also holds when the self-interaction of a scalar field is taken into account. That is, our two-loop-order calculation suggests that in an effective field theory of metric and scalar fields, one arrives at a consistent theory with massless gravitons if the cosmological constant is fixed from the condition of vanishing vacuum energy. Vice versa, imposing the consistency condition in Minkowskian background leads to a vanishing vacuum energy.