A Critical Cosmological Constant from Millimeter Extra Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper explores a 6D brane universe model where the effective 4D cosmological constant is decoupled from brane couplings, potentially explaining the small observed value through short-distance physics near singularities.

Contribution

It proposes a mechanism in 6D brane models where the cosmological constant remains insensitive to brane couplings, offering a novel approach to the cosmological constant problem.

Findings

Bulk quantities are insensitive to brane couplings in symmetric scenarios.

Singularity-free compactifications do not preserve the decoupling property.

Short-distance physics near singularities may allow desired compactifications.

Abstract

We consider `brane universe' scenarios with standard-model fields localized on a 3-brane in 6 spacetime dimensions. We show that if the spacetime is rotationally symmetric about the brane, local quantities in the bulk are insensitive to the couplings on the brane. This potentially allows compactifications where the effective 4-dimensional cosmological constant is independent of the couplings on the 3-brane. We consider several possible singularity-free compactification mechanisms, and find that they do not maintain this property. We also find solutions with naked spacetime singularities, and we speculate that new short-distance physics can become important near the singularities and allow a compactification with the desired properties. The picture that emerges is that standard-model loop contributions to the effective 4-dimensional cosmological constant can be cut off at distances shorter than the compactification scale. At shorter distance scales, renormalization effects due to standard-model fields renormalize the 3-brane tension, which changes a deficit angle in the transverse space without affecting local quantities in the bulk. For a compactification scale of order 10^{-2} mm, this gives a standard-model contribution to the cosmological constant in the range favored by cosmology.