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

Alexander, S. ; Mbonye, M. ; Moffat, J.

Technical Information Center Oak Ridge Tennessee

关键词: Cosmological constant;    Fermions;    Vacuum states;    Gravitational fields;    Energy gap;   

RP-ID  :  DE2004827296

学科分类：工程和技术（综合）

美国|英语

来源: National Technical Reports Library

【 摘 要 】

A 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 (Delta) in the vacuum energy, identified with (radical)(Lambda), where (Lambda) 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 (radical)(Lambda) vanishes exponentially fast as the universe expands due to the dependence of the energy gap on the density of Fermi surface fermions, D((epsilon)), predicting a small cosmological constant in the present universe.