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Scale-invariance in gravity and implications for the cosmological constant

Bryan Kelleher

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Recently, a scale invariant theory was constructed by imposing a conformal symmetry on general relativity. The imposition of this symmetry changed the configuration space from superspace—the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms—to conformal superspace—the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms and conformal transformations. However, despite numerous attractive features, the theory suffers from at least one major problem: the volume of the universe is no longer a dynamical variable. In attempting to resolve this problem a new theory is found which has several surprising and attractive features from both quantization and cosmological perspectives. Furthermore, it is an extremely restrictive theory and thus may provide testable predictions quickly and easily. One particularly interesting feature of the theory is the resolution of the cosmological constant problem.


PACS

04.20.Fy Canonical formalism, Lagrangians, and variational principles

11.10.Ef Lagrangian and Hamiltonian approach

98.80.Es Observational cosmology (including Hubble constant, distance scale, cosmological constant, early Universe, etc)

MSC

83C05 Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems)

83F05 Cosmology

Subjects

Gravitation and cosmology

Particle physics and field theory

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 11 (7 June 2004)

Received 21 October 2003

Published 26 April 2004



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