The history of the cosmological constant problem

2002/08/13 by Norbert Straumann, Straumann, Norbert · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #History and Developments in Astronomy #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0208027

12 pages, invited talk at the XVIIIth IAP Colloquium: Observational and theoretical results on the accelerating universe, July 1-5 2002, Paris (France)

arxiv created 2002/08/13 · openalex publication_date 2002/08/13 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The interesting early history of the cosmological term is reviewed, beginning with its introduction by Einstein in 1917 and ending with two papers of Zel'dovich, shortly before the advent of spontaneously broken gauge theories. Beside classical aspects, I shall also mention some unpublished early remarks by Pauli on possible contributions of vacuum energies in quantum field theory.

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