2009/06/30 by F. Urban, Federico R. Urban, Ariel Zhitnitsky +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2009/09/018
published as JCAP 0909:018,2009 · uses revtex4 - v2 as published
arxiv created 2009/09/11 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/11 · arxiv updated 2011/07/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We suggest that the solution to the cosmological vacuum energy puzzle does not require any new field beyond the standard model, but rather can be explained as a result of the interaction of the infrared sector of the effective theory of gravity with standard model fields. The cosmological constant in this framework can be presented in terms of QCD parameters and the Hubble constant H as follows, vac ≃ H ⋅ m q ⟨ q ⟩/ m η' ≃ (4.3⋅10 −3 eV) 4 , which is amazingly close to the observed value today. In this work we explain how this proposal can be tested by analyzing CMB data. In particular, knowing the value of the observed cosmological constant fixes univocally the smallest size of the spatially flat, constant time 3d hypersurface which, for instance in the case of an effective 1-torus, is predicted to be around 74 Gpc. We also comment on another important prediction of this framework which is a violation of cosmological isotropy. Such anisotropy is indeed apparently observed by WMAP, and will be confirmed (or ruled out) by future PLANCK data.