Cosmic Acceleration in the Nonlocal Approach to the Cosmological Constant Problem

TL;DR

This paper presents a local formulation of a nonlocal approach to the cosmological constant problem, demonstrating its stability under quantum effects and explaining late-time cosmic acceleration with a light scalaron.

Contribution

It introduces a local formulation that handles quantum effects and incorporates an $R^2$ term to explain cosmic acceleration with a light scalaron.

Findings

Effective cosmological constant is radiatively stable.

A tiny scalaron mass (~1 meV) can account for current dark energy.

The approach is applicable to open universes with infinite volume.

Abstract

We have recently constructed a manifestly local formulation of a nonlocal approach to the cosmological constant problem which can treat with quantum effects from both matter and gravitational fields. In this formulation, it has been explicitly shown that the effective cosmological constant is radiatively stable even in the presence of the gravitational loop effects. Since we are naturally led to add the $R^2$ term and the corresponding topological action to an original action, we make use of this formulation to account for the late-time acceleration of expansion of the universe in case of the open universes with infinite space-time volume. We will see that when the "scalaron", which exists in the $R^2$ gravity as an extra scalar field, has a tiny mass of the order of magnitude ${\cal{O}}(1 meV)$, we can explain the current value of the cosmological constant in a consistent manner.