Abstract
Of the contributions to the cosmological constant, zero-point energy contributions scale as where is an ultraviolet cutoff used to regulate the calculations. I show that such contributions vanish when calculated in perturbation theory. This demonstration uses a little-known modification to perturbation theory found by Honerkamp and Meetz and by Gerstein, Jackiw, Lee, and Weinberg which comes into play when using cutoffs and interactions with multiple derivatives, as found in chiral theories and gravity. In a path integral treatment, the new interaction arises from the path integral measure and cancels the contributions. This reduces the sensitivity of the cosmological constant to the high energy cutoff, although it does not resolve the cosmological constant problem. The feature removes one of the common motivations for supersymmetry. It also calls into question some of the results of the asymptotic safety program. Covariance and quadratic cutoff dependence are also briefly discussed.
- Received 21 June 2021
- Accepted 13 July 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.045005
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society