The Cosmological Constant Problem, an Inspiration for New Physics

TL;DR

This paper critically reviews various approaches to the cosmological constant problem, highlighting the challenges and the lack of a satisfactory solution, and explores a novel symmetry involving imaginary spacetime.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of existing solutions and introduces a new symmetry approach involving transformation to imaginary spacetime.

Findings

None of the current approaches fully solve the problem.

A new symmetry involving imaginary spacetime is proposed.

The cosmological constant problem remains unresolved.

Abstract

We have critically compared different approaches to the cosmological constant problem, which is at the edge of elementary particle physics and cosmology. This problem is deeply connected with the difficulties formulating a theory of quantum gravity. After the 1998 discovery that our universe's expansion is accelerating, the cosmological constant problem has obtained a new dimension. We are mainly interested in the question why the cosmological constant is so small. We have identified four different classes of solutions: a symmetry, a back-reaction mechanism, a violation of (some of) the building blocks of general relativity, and statistical approaches. In this thesis we carefully study all known potential candidates for a solution, but conclude that so far none of the approaches gives a satisfactory solution. A symmetry would be the most elegant solution and we study a new symmetry under transformation to imaginary spacetime.