Dark Energy from Discrete Spacetime

作者:Trout Aaron D*
来源:PLos One, 2013, 8(12): e80826.
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0080826

摘要

Dark energy accounts for most of the matter-energy content of our universe, yet current theories of its origin rely on radical physical assumptions such as the holographic principle or controversial anthropic arguments. We give a better motivated explanation for dark energy, claiming that it arises from a small negative scalar-curvature present even in empty spacetime. The vacuum has this curvature because spacetime is fundamentally discrete and there are more ways for a discrete geometry to have negative curvature than positive. We explicitly compute this effect using a variant of the well known dynamical-triangulations (DT) model for quantum gravity. Our model predicts a time-varying non-zero cosmological constant with a current value, in natural units, in agreement with observation. This calculation is made possible by a novel characterization of the possible DT action values combined with numerical evidence concerning their degeneracies.

  • 出版日期2013-12-3

全文