On the trace-free Einstein equations as a viable alternative to general relativity
By G. Ellis, Henk van Elst, Jeff Murugan, Jean-Philippe Uzan. 2010
223 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The quantum field theoretical prediction for the vacuum energy density leads to a value for the effective cosmological constant that is incorrect by between 60 and 120 orders of magnitude. We review an old proposal of replacing Einstein’s field equations by their trace-free part (the trace-free Einstein equations), together with an independent assumption of energy–momentum conservation by matter fields. While this does not solve the fundamental issue of why the cosmological constant has the value that is observed cosmologically, it is indeed a viable theory that resolves the problem of the discrepancy between the vacuum energy density and the observed value of the cosmological constant. However, one has to check that, as well as preserving the standard cosmological equations, this does not destroy other predictions, such as the junction conditions that underlie the use of standard stellar models. We confirm that no problems arise here: hence, the trace-free Einstein equations are indeed viable for cosmological and astrophysical applications.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7117c658d57a08cbd92196187c55112b1adea5cf
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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Citations in the corpus
- An Asymptotically Safe Guide to Quantum Gravity and Matter (2018, background): “The dimension of theory space and the number of relevant couplings decrease by one (Eichhorn, 2015) in unimodular gravity (Unruh, 1989; Finkelstein et al., 2001; Ellis et al., 2011), where the determinant of the metric is a fixed density, removing the cosmological constant from the action.”