Disordered Locality as an Explanation for the Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper proposes that dark energy may originate from non-local effects in quantum gravity, where a mismatch between micro and macro locality could explain a small vacuum energy in cosmology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cosmological model incorporating disordered locality from quantum gravity, offering a potential explanation for dark energy.

Findings

Disordered locality can lead to a naturally small vacuum energy.

The extended model aligns with observed cosmological phenomena.

Non-local quantum effects influence large-scale universe dynamics.

Abstract

We discuss a novel explanation of the dark energy as a manifestation of macroscopic non-locality coming from quantum gravity, as proposed by Markopoulou. It has been previously suggested that in a transition from an early quantum geometric phase of the universe to a low temperature phase characterized by an emergent spacetime metric, locality might have been "disordered". This means that there is a mismatch of micro-locality, as determined by the microscopic quantum dynamics and macro-locality as determined by the classical metric that governs the emergent low energy physics. In this paper we discuss the consequences for cosmology by studying a simple extension of the standard cosmological models with disordered locality. We show that the consequences can include a naturally small vacuum energy.