Abstract
I consider the contribution to the cosmological constant of the Casimir energy of a scalar field of extremely low mass filling the universe (a spacetime of the type, e.g., R × T p × T q, R × T p × S q,…). This effect is driven by ‘natural’ compactifying boundary conditions, imposed on some of the coordinates, associated both with large and with small scales (the total number of large spatial coordinates being always three). The very small—but non zero—value of the cosmological constant obtained from recent astrophysical observations can be matched with the results coming from the model, by just fixing the numbers of —actually compactified—ordinary and tiny dimensions to be very acceptable ones. The compactification radius are taken to be the one corresponding to the present observable universe (for large dimensions), and in the range (1–103) l pl , where l pl is the Planck length (for the small ones). The mass of the scalar field is of, at most, M ≤ 1.2 × 10−32 eV, perfectly compatible with the very strict observational bounds. Finally, a marginally closed universe is favoured by the model.
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Elizalde, E. (2002). Casimir Effect Contribution to the Cosmological Constant. In: Plionis, M., Cotsakis, S. (eds) Modern Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 276. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0622-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0622-4_2
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