Vacuum energy sequestering and conformal symmetry

Journal Article · Sun May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/05/002· OSTI ID:22667583

Ben-Dayan, Ido; Ruehle, Fabian; Westphal, Alexander ^[1]; Richter, Robert ^[2]

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1. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Theory Group, 22603 Hamburg (Germany)
2. II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Hamburg University, Hamburg (Germany)

In a series of recent papers Kaloper and Padilla proposed a mechanism to sequester standard model vacuum contributions to the cosmological constant. We study the consequences of embedding their proposal into a fully local quantum theory. In the original work, the bare cosmological constant Λ and a scaling parameter λ are introduced as global fields. We find that in the local case the resulting Lagrangian is that of a spontaneously broken conformal field theory where λ plays the role of the dilaton. A vanishing or a small cosmological constant is thus a consequence of the underlying conformal field theory structure.

• OSTI ID: 22667583
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 05; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CONFORMAL INVARIANCE
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
DILATONS
LAGRANGIAN FUNCTION
STANDARD MODEL