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The National Technical Information Service acquires, indexes, abstracts, and archives the largest collection of U.S. government-sponsored technical reports in existence. The NTRL offers online, free and open access to these authenticated government technical reports. Technical reports and documents in its repository may be available online for free either from the issuing federal agency, the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s Federal Digital System website, or through search engines.

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

DE2004827296

Publication Date	2004
Personal Author	Alexander, S.; Mbonye, M.; Moffat, J.
Page Count	18
Abstract	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.
Keywords	Cosmological constant Fermions Vacuum states Gravitational fields Energy gap Universe Condensates
Source Agency	Technical Information Center Oak Ridge Tennessee
Corporate Authors	Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, CA.; Rochester Inst. of Tech., NY.; Department of Energy, Washington, DC.; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, (Ontario).
Supplemental Notes	Prepared in cooperation with Rochester Inst. of Tech., NY. and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, (Ontario). Sponsored by Department of Energy, Washington, DC.
Document Type	Technical Report
NTIS Issue Number	200510

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

Gravitational Instability of the Vacuum: Insight into the Cosmological Constant Problem.
DE2004827296

Publication Date	2004
Personal Author	Alexander, S.; Mbonye, M.; Moffat, J.
Page Count	18
Abstract	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.
Keywords	Cosmological constant Fermions Vacuum states Gravitational fields Energy gap Universe Condensates
Source Agency	Technical Information Center Oak Ridge Tennessee
Corporate Authors	Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, CA.; Rochester Inst. of Tech., NY.; Department of Energy, Washington, DC.; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, (Ontario).
Supplemental Notes	Prepared in cooperation with Rochester Inst. of Tech., NY. and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, (Ontario). Sponsored by Department of Energy, Washington, DC.
Document Type	Technical Report
NTIS Issue Number	200510