Quantum cosmology near two dimensions

Teresa Bautista and Atish Dabholkar
Phys. Rev. D 94, 044017 – Published 10 August 2016

Abstract

We consider a Weyl-invariant formulation of gravity with a cosmological constant in d-dimensional spacetime and show that near two dimensions the classical action reduces to the timelike Liouville action. We show that the renormalized cosmological term leads to a nonlocal quantum momentum tensor which satisfies the Ward identities in a nontrivial way. The resulting evolution equations for an isotropic, homogeneous universe lead to slowly decaying vacuum energy and power-law expansion. We outline the implications for the cosmological constant problem, inflation, and dark energy.

  • Figure
  • Received 12 January 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.044017

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Teresa Bautista1,2 and Atish Dabholkar3,1,2

  • 1Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR 7589, LPTHE, Paris F-75005, France
  • 2CNRS, UMR 7589, LPTHE, Paris F-75005, France
  • 3International Centre for Theoretical Physics, ICTP-UNESCO, Strada Costiera 11, Trieste 34151, Italy

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Issue

Vol. 94, Iss. 4 — 15 August 2016

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