Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2006-04-14
Int.J.Mod.Phys.D15:1987-2010,2006
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
24 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the special issue of Int. J. Mod. Phys. devoted to dark energy and dark matter, IJMP style
Scientific paper
10.1142/S0218271806009431
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.
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