Vacuum Energy: Myths and Reality
Date: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 @ 22:37:59 UTC
Topic: Science


Authors: G.E. Volovik, Helsinki University of Technology, Low Temperature Laboratory, P.O. Box 2200, FIN–02015 HUT, Finland,
Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, 119334 Moscow, Russia
volovik@boojum.hut.fi

Comments: 24 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the special issue of Int. J. Mod. Phys. devoted to dark energy and dark matter, IJMP style
Subj-class: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology; Statistical Mechanics




We discuss the main myths related to the vacuum energy and cosmological constant, such as: ``unbearable lightness of space-time''; the dominating contribution of zero point energy of quantum fields to the vacuum energy; non-zero vacuum energy of the false vacuum; dependence of the vacuum energy on the overall shift of energy; the absolute value of energy only has significance for gravity; the vacuum energy depends on the vacuum content; cosmological constant changes after the phase transition; zero-point energy of the vacuum between the plates in Casimir effect must gravitate, that is why the zero-point energy in the vacuum outside the plates must also gravitate; etc. All these and some other conjectures appear to be wrong when one considers the thermodynamics of the ground state of the quantum many-body system, which mimics macroscopic thermodynamics of quantum vacuum. In particular, in spite of the ultraviolet divergence of the zero-point energy, the natural value of the vacuum energy is comparable with the observed dark energy. That is why the vacuum energy is the plausible candidate for the dark energy.

Full text here: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0604062






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