Metric Unification of Gravitation and Electromagnetism Solves the Cosmological Constant Problem

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unification of gravity and electromagnetism that eliminates the cosmological constant problem by ensuring vacuum energy does not influence spacetime curvature, aligning with Feynman's conjecture.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetric tensor-based unification of gravity and electromagnetism that decouples vacuum energy from spacetime curvature, solving the cosmological constant problem.

Findings

Vacuum energy does not contribute to spacetime curvature in this formulation.

The cosmological constant effectively does not exist in this theory.

Vacuum energy remains large in both early and late universe states.

Abstract

We first review the cosmological constant problem, and then mention a conjecture of Feynman according to which the general relativistic theory of gravity should be reformulated in such a way that energy does not couple to gravity. We point out that our recent unification of gravitation and electromagnetism through a symmetric tensor has the property that the free electromagnetic energy and the vacuum energy do not contribute explicitly to the curvature of spacetime just like the free gravitational energy. Therefore in this formulation of general relativity, the vacuum energy density has its very large value today as in the early universe, while the cosmological constant does not exist at all.